Mandil family photograph collection

Gavra Mandil was born on September 6, 1936 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, to Mosa Moshe Mandil and Gabriela Mandil (née Konfino). Two years later the family moved to Novi Sad, Yugoslavia (now Novi Sad, Serbia) where his father opened a photo studio. Gavra's maternal grandfather, Gavra Konfino, had been the royal photographer of King Alexander in Belgrade. His sister, Irena Mandil was born in 1938. After the German invasion in April 1941, the family fled south to the Italian-controlled province of Kosovo. The Mandils were imprisoned along with several other Jewish families in the city of Pristina, where they remained for ten months. While in prison Mosa Mandil ingratiated himself to his Italian captors by volunteering to take their pictures. Following complaints by the Jewish prisoners regarding the overcrowded prison conditions, half the prisoners were executed. Mosa appealed to the Italians whom he had befriended to save the remaining Jews. In January 1943, the Mandil family and the other prisoners were sent to Kavaja, Albina where they were granted limited freedom. Following the Italian capitulation and the German incursion into Albania, the Mandils moved to Tirana, hoping to find safety in numbers in the capital city. Gavra's father found work in the photography studio of Neshed Ismail, an Albanian who had worked for Gavra's grandfather in Belgrade. Also employed in this studio was a sixteen-year-old Albanian apprentice named Refik Veseli. In the fall of 1943, sensing the growing danger for Jewish refugees living in the capital, Refik sought his parents' permission to hide the Mandil family (along with their cousins, the Ben-Yosif family) in their home in the mountain village of Krujë. From November 1943 until the liberation in October 1944, the Mandils were sheltered by the Veseli family. Seven-year-old Gavra and his five-year-old sister, Irena, lived openly as Muslim villagers during this period, but their parents had to remain hidden during the day in a room above the Veseli's barn. After the war the Mandils returned to Novi Sad, where they re-opened their photo studio. In 1946 Refik Veseli joined the family in Novi Sad and completed his professional training with Mosa Mandil. In 1948, after the consolidation of the communist regime in Yugoslavia and the founding of the Jewish State, the Mandils decided to immigrate to Israel. Refik returned to his family in Albania. Refik was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous among the Nations in 1990.