Sarajevo, April 1942. The Nazis and their Croatian allies descend on Sarajevo and commence the destruction of that city's Jewish, Serbian, and Gypsy heritages.
Adolf Hitler and Alfred Rosenberg, Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, planned a massive museum of Judaica - a "museum of an extinct race." One item that they coveted was the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, a superb illuminated manuscript from the days of Islamic Spain.
Dervis Korkut was a librarian at the Sarajevo Museum. Coming from a long line of Muslim scholars, he was fascinated by the lives of Bosnia's minorities. When the Nazis came to Sarajevo Korkut saved the precious Haggadah. He told the commanding German officer that the museum had already turned over the Haggadah to another German. Dervis then hid the Haggadah among Korans at a tiny, provincial mosque.
Dervis later saved the life of a Jewish girl.
The whole article is only available in the New Yorker's print edition, but an abstract is available here.