Gabriela Mandil lived in Novi Sad (Yugoslavia, now Serbia) with her husband Moshe and their children Gavra and Irena. The couple owned a photo store.
German troops occupied Yugoslavia in 1941. To evade persecution as Jews, the Mandils posed as a Christian family and fled to Italian-occupied Kosovo. The Italian occupying authorities initially interned them in Pristina, but allowed them to leave for the Albanian town of Kavaja in 1942.
In September 1943 German troops invaded Albania. The Mandil family fled to the Albanian capital, Tirana. Gabriela Mandil’s husband found work in a photo store there and befriended the employee Refik Veseli. When the German authorities demanded the deportation of the country’s Jews, the Muslim Veseli offered to help the family. Refik’s father Vesel Veseli took the Mandils to the mountain village of Kruja. Gabriela Mandil was disguised as a Muslim woman during their escape, wearing a veil. In Kruja, the Mandil family hid in the Veselis’ house and survived there.
Gabriela Mandil and her family emigrated to Israel in 1948.
Moshe and Gabriela Mandil (center) in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia, 1939. Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C., 08208
Moshe and Gabriela Mandil with their children Gavra and Irena, with Hamid Veseli (right), in Tirana, the Albanian capital, 1943/44. Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C., courtesy of Gavra Mandil 24718
Front row from left: Gavra and Irena Mandil, Deshira, Fatima, Esad, and Vesel Veseli. Back row: Moshe and Gabriela Mandil, Finiza and Ruzhica Ben-Josef, Hyrije Veseli with her child Lule, and an employee, Kruja, June 1944. Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C., 08273
