.. the prominent and open Arab Nazis, like Anwar Sadat or Haj Amin al Husseini, the Mufti of Jeruslaem?
For those interested, here's some more info on Yasser Arafat's family member, Haj Amin el-Husseini, who actually did seek and make an alliance with Nazi Germany.
answering-islam.org
Haj Amin el-Husseini was the Mufti of Jerusalem between 1921-1937 and was in exile and in collaberation with the Nazis during the years 1941-1945.
European Jews were the victims of Nazi anti-Semitism. However, this racist philosophy applied to all members of the "Semitic race" - including Arabs. The Nazi leadership expressed complete disdain towards the Arabs and were confused by the efforts of el-Husseini, to curry favor with Germany prior to the outbreak of World War II.
According to Arie Stav's article Arabs and Nazism, in OUTPOST, January 1996:
"The Mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini was the equal of any of the war criminals. In postwar testimony, a senior aide to Eichmann described el-Husseini's appetite for destruction. He said that the Mufti visited the Auschwitz gas chambers, in disguise, and reproved the Germans for their lack of diligence in the destruction of the Jews. He loudly protested the proposed Nazi deal to save 4,000 Bulgarian Jewish children or to exchange trucks for Hungarian Jews.
The Mufti was never tried because the Allies were afraid of the storm in the Arab world if its national hero were to be treated as a criminal. The Mufti was received as a national hero in Egypt where he was among the sponsors of the 1948 war. Indeed, the Mufti represents the link connecting the two attempts to destroy the Jews, that of the Nazis and that of the Arabs. It is thus not surprising that the Mufti has a lofty place in the PLO's pantheon. Arafat saw the Mufti as an educator and leader, declaring in 1985 that he deemed it an honor to walk in his footsteps. Arafat stressed that the PLO continued to march in the path carved out by the Mufti."
notendur.centrum.is
el-Husseini's involvement in the Final Solution
It is a strange "coincidence" that the Germans decided the systematic destruction of European Jewry only two months after the Mufti's meeting with Hitler. Since 1939 the Nazi policy had been to use the Jews as slave labourers and isolate them in ghettos, but not to exterminate them. However, after his arrival the Nazi policy changed. I am certainly not saying the Mufti was participating to any major extent in the planning of the Final Solution. However, I want to point out that at this time he was having meetings with some of the top Nazi figures and might easily have taken some part in the planning. Still, whatever the part the Mufti played in the Holocaust, one thing is almost certain, he knew about it from the beginning and approved.
In 1941 the Mufti's delegate proposed a revised version of their former draft of an Axis-Arab treaty. According to captured documents the Mufti had just one thing in mind for the Yishuv Jewry:
Germany and Italy recognize the illegality of the Jewish National Home in Palestine. They recognize the right of Palestine and other Arab countries to solve the question of the Jewish elements in Palestine and in other Arab countries as required by national interests, and in the same way as the Jewish question in the Axis lands is being solved.
.
.
.
In June 1944, Dieter Wisliceny, Eichmann's deputy for Slovakia and Hungary, told Dr. Rudolf Kasztner in Budapest that he was convinced that the Mufti had
played a role in the decision to exterminate the European Jews... The importance of this role must not be disregarded ...The Mufti had repeatedly suggested to the various authorities with whom he was maintaining contact, above all to Hitler, Ribbentrop and Himmler, the extermination of European Jewry. He considered this as a comfortable solution of the Palestinian problem.
In his conversation with Endre Steiner in Bratislava, Wisliceny said:
The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and advisor of Eichmann and Himmler in execution of this plan...He was one of Eichmann's best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard him say, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chamber of Auschwitz.
Wisliceny, who himself was a major war criminal and finally executed in 1948, repeated the Mufti's participation in the Holocaust at the Nuremberg trials in July 1946.
.
.
.
The number of Jews who had obtained visa for Palestine, but were cancelled because of the Mufti's protests were:
13 May, 1943 : 4,000 children and 500 adults. (Bulgaria)
28 June, 1943 : 1,800 children and 200 adults. (Rumania)
28 June, 1943 : 900 children and 100 adults. (Hungary)
The number of Jews who very likely ended up in concentration camps, instead of Palestine, thus, was 7,500. However, this falls short of being the full number of victims due to the Mufti's requests.
A document published at the Eichmann trial 1961 revealed that the Rumanian Prime Minister had allowed the emigration of 80,000 Rumanian Jews but the Germans ordered him to cancel their visas "in accordance with our agreement with the Mufti". Eichmann spoke of an agreement on the same matters between the Mufti and Himmler, to use his words: "We have promised him that no European Jew would enter Palestine any more." Most of these 80,000 Jews were later on sent to Poland and at least some of them could have been saved. The Mufti simply wanted them dead, according to Wilhelm Melchers who revealed at the Nuremberg trials: "The Mufti was an accomplished foe of the Jews and did not conceal that he would love to see all of them liquidated." One of the documents presented by the United Nations at an Assembly meeting in 1947 was the Mufti's letter to the Hungarian Foreign Minister, dated 28 June 1943 (see appendix). There he said, among other things:
I ask your Excellency to permit me to draw your attention to the necessity of preventing the Jews from leaving your country for Palestine; and if there are reasons which make their removal necessary, it would be indispensable and infinitively preferable to send them to other countries where they would find themselves under active control, for example, in Poland, in order to protect oneself from their menace and avoid the consequent damage.
Since he knew perfectly well what was going on in Poland, this would mean their instant death.
notendur.centrum.is
el-Husseini's work for the Nazis
The Berlin based headquarters of the Mufti controlled almost a world-wide net of collaborators. Sponsored by German money he extended his claws to the Middle East, as well as to other areas where Muslims lived. His main activities were: 1) Radio propaganda; 2) Espionage and fifth column activities in the Middle East; 3) Organising Muslims into military units in Axis-occupied countries; and 4) Establishing some German controlled Arab Legions and the Arab Brigade. He visited the Balkans, had his picture taken saluting Hitler, met Ante Pavelic, the Croatian "butcher" and dictator, and was even in touch with Emperor Hirohito of Japan. Also, he was in charge of supervising Axis propaganda to Muslims all over the world and
himself went on the radio on several occasions and his broadcasts were among the most violent pro-Axis utterances ever produced. He had at his disposal no less than six "freedom stations"... urging the Arabs of Palestine and Moslems all over the world, including those in the United States, to rise against the Allies, join the fifth column, commit acts of sabotage, and kill the Jews... In addition, Haj Amin supplied the Middle East with propaganda papers and pamphlets in Arabic. His greatest achievement was, however, the recruitment of tens of thousands of the Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania to the Waffen SS. His Arab Legions later participated in massacring tens of thousands of partisan Serbs, Jews and Gypsies. In 1943 there were 20,000 Muslims under arms in "his" division of the Waffen SS, the Handschar. (See: George Lepre, Himmler's Bosnian Division. The Waffen-SS Handschar Division 1943-1945, Schiffer Military History, Atglen, PA, 1997). |
