Haj Amin al-Husseini arafat's mentor, look him up
here's a hint
In post-war historiography Husseini was often seen as an architect of the Holocaust, a thesis revived recently by Schwanitz and Rubin. [162] Documents, such as the testimony of Fritz Grobba, [163] confirm that an associate of al-Husseini's, together with three associates of former Iraqi Prime Minister certainly did visit the Sachsenhausen concentration camp as part of a German secret police "training course" in July 1942. At the time, the Sachsenhausen camp housed large numbers of Jews, but was only transformed into a death camp in the following year. [164] Their tour through the camp presented it as a re-educational institution, and they were shown the high quality of objects made by inmates, and happy Russian prisoners who, reformed to fight Bolshevism, were paraded, singing, in sprightly new uniforms. They left the camp very favourably impressed by its programme of educational indocrination. [165]
Various sources have repeatedly alleged that he visited other concentration camps, and also the death camps of Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka and Mauthausen, and though, according to Höpp, [166] there is little conclusive documentary evidence to substantiate these other visits, Schwanitz and Rubin apparently conclude that it almost certain he visited the gas-chambers at Auschwitz. [167] Although some historians have questioned al-Husseini's knowledge of the Holocaust while it was in progress, Wolfgang G. Schwanitz notes that in his memoirs Husseini recalled that Heinrich Himmler, in the summer of 1943, while confiding some German war secrets, inveighed against Jewish "war guilt", and revealed the on-going extermination (in Arabic, abadna) of the Jews. [168]
Gilbert Achcar, referring to this meeting with Himmler, observes:
The Mufti was well aware that the European Jews were being wiped out; he never claimed the contrary. Nor, unlike some of his present-day admirers, did he play the ignoble, perverse, and stupid game of Holocaust denial…. His armour-propre would not allow him to justify himself to the Jews….gloating that the Jews had paid a much higher price than the Germans… he cites… : ”Their losses in the Second World War represent more than thirty percent of the total number of their people …. Statements like this, from a man who was well placed to know what the Nazis had done … constitute a powerful argument against Holocaust deniers. Husseini reports that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler … told him in summer 1943 that the Germans had ‘already exterminated more than three million’ Jews: “I was astonished by this figure, as I had known nothing about the matter until then.” …. Thus. in 1943, Husseini knew about the genocide…. [169]
The memoir then continues:-
Himmler asked me on the occasion:"How you you propose to settle the Jewish question in your country?' I replied:'All we want from them is that they return to their countries of origin." He (Himmler) replied:' We shall never authorize their return to Germany.' Laurens 2002, p. 469.
By Husseini's admission therefore he was informed of the Nazi genocide of the Jews certainly by the summer of 1943. Wolfgang G. Schwanitz doubts the sincerity of his surprise since, he argues, Husseini had publicly declared that Muslims should follow the example Germans set for a "definitive solution to the Jewish problem". [170]
Subsequently, the Mufti declared in November, 1943:
It is the duty of Muhammadans in general and Arabs in particular to … drive all Jews from Arab and Muhammadan countries….Germany is also struggling against the common foe who oppressed Arabs and Muhammadans in their different countries. It has very clearly recognized the Jews for what they are and resolved to find a definitive solution [endgültige Lösung] for the Jewish danger that will eliminate the scourge that Jews represent in the world. …. [171]
At the Nuremberg trials, one of Adolf Eichmann's deputies, Dieter Wisliceny, stated that al-Husseini had actively encouraged the extermination of European Jews, and that he had had an elaborate meeting with Eichmann at his office, during which Eichmann gave him an intensive look at the current state of the " Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe" by the Third Reich. These allegations are controversial. [172] A single affidavit by Rudolf Kastner reported that Wisliceny told him that he had overheard Husseini say he had visited Auschwitz incognito in Eichmann's company. [173] Eichmann denied this at his trial in Jerusalem in 1961. He had been invited to Palestine in 1937 by a representative of the Haganah, Feival Polkes, [174] for office business, apparently concerning the Ha'avara Agreement for Jewish immigration into Palestine from Germany, at a time when he was not even a commissioned officer. As for contacting the Arab rebels in Palestine, or their leader the Mufti, Eichmann was turned back by the British authorities at the Egyptian border. [175] Eichmann stated that he had only been introduced to al-Husseini during an official reception, along with all other department heads. The Jerusalem court accepted Wisliceny's testimony about a key conversation between Eichmann and the mufti, [176] and found as proven that al-Husseini had aimed to implement the Final Solution. [177] Hannah Arendt, who was present at the trial, concluded in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil the evidence for an Eichmann- al-Husseini connection was based on rumour and unfounded. [178] [179]
Rafael Medoff concludes that 'actually there is no evidence that the Mufti's presence was a factor at all; the Wisliceny hearsay is not merely uncorroborated, but conflicts with everything else that is known about the origins of the Final Solution.' [180] Bernard Lewis also called Wisliceny's testimony into doubt: 'There is no independent documentary confirmation of Wisliceny's statements, and it seems unlikely that the Nazis needed any such additional encouragement from the outside.' [181] |
