Tova Kabiljo was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia, in 1938. She lived there with her Jewish parents Jozef and Rivka Kabiljo and her older brother Benjamin.
In April 1941 the Kabiljo family’s apartment was hit during air raids by the German Luftwaffe. The family of four was taken in by Muslim friends of theirs, the Hardaga family. Tova Kabiljo and Zarifa Hardaga, the daughter in the Hardaga family, were good friends.
A short time later, Sarajevo became part of the “Independent State of Croatia.” The Croatian fascist organization Ustasha deported Jews to labor and concentration camps. Tova Kabiljo fled with her mother and brother to Mostar in the Italian occupation zone. Tova’s father Jozef Kabiljo joined them later. The family survived there.
Tova Kabiljo and her family emigrated to Israel in 1950.
When the Bosnian war started in 1992, Tova Greenberg, née Kabiljo, helped members of the Hardaga family flee to Israel, so they could escape the war and violence in Sarajevo.
Tova Kabiljo (left) and Zarifa Hardaga, Sarajevo, 1940. Source: Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem, 22774/3
Right to left: Zejneba Hardaga, her friend Rivka Kabiljo with her daughter Tova, Zejneba’s daughter Zarifa, and Bahrija Hardaga, Sarajevo, 1941. Source: Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem, 2774/1
Tova Greenberg, née Kabiljo, greets Zejneba Sušić in Israel, 1994. Source: Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem, 14480476
Jozef Kabiljo, Tova Greenberg, née Kabiljo (2nd and 3rd from right), Benjamin Kabiljo (5th from left), and their helper Zejneba Hardaga, later Sušić (4th from right) at the ceremony honoring the Hardaga family in the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, Jerusalem, June 1985. Source: Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem, 14476307
