The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem-- A role in the Holocaust?

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AJFFM
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Re: Grand Mufti of Jerusalem's role in the Holocaust

#16

Post by AJFFM » 26 Oct 2015, 22:03

Paul Lantos wrote:Hitler was also inspired by the Ottomans.
Hitler, August 22, 1939 wrote:Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?
In the news article he talked about Turks using incinerators against the Armenians which did not happen (well not technically, bodies were burned after the fact because of the great Syrian famine and epidemic of 1915-1916 which killed hundreds of thousands of people including more Armenians than those who died in the actual massacres).

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Re: Grand Mufti of Jerusalem's role in the Holocaust

#17

Post by Paul Lantos » 27 Oct 2015, 02:00

Are you suggesting that the cremations under the Nazis were inspired by the Armenians? That argument would be easily dismissed, but I'm not sure what you were getting at.


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Re: Grand Mufti of Jerusalem's role in the Holocaust

#18

Post by 4thskorpion » 27 Oct 2015, 11:16

In 1970, the journalist Haviv Canaan disclosed that the mufti had been planning to build crematoriums for Jews in Samaria’s Dotan Valley. Canaan based his words on the testimony of Faiz Bei Adrisi, senior Arab officer in the Mandate police and commander of the village subdistrict of the Jerusalem district, who told him that Haj Amin aimed to enter Jerusalem at the head of his subordinates, the soldiers of the Arab Legion that was organized in the framework of the German army. His great plan was to build in the Dotan Valley, near Nablus, giant crematoriums of the Auschwitz kind, to which the Jews of the Land of Israel as well as the Jews of Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and even North Africa would be brought, so as to annihilate them with the methods used by the SS in the death camps of Europe.

http://jcpa.org/al-aksa-libel-advocate- ... -husseini/

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Re: Grand Mufti of Jerusalem's role in the Holocaust

#19

Post by AJFFM » 27 Oct 2015, 15:52

Paul Lantos wrote:Are you suggesting that the cremations under the Nazis were inspired by the Armenians? That argument would be easily dismissed, but I'm not sure what you were getting at.
I am talking about the cremation incidents reported during the Armenian massacres which the Historian in the article is alluding to. These were cremation of people who were already killed in most incidents (there were Oradour-Sur-Glane type incidents but were limited from my knowledge).

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Re: Grand Mufti of Jerusalem's role in the Holocaust

#20

Post by Paul Lantos » 27 Oct 2015, 16:51

Right, but I'm not clear on the point of the anecdote. The mufti was clearly antisemitic, was clearly inspired by the Nazi activities, and probably had intimate awareness of the exterminations. How early he knew isn't clear (certainly not in 1940 because it hadn't even started yet), but he certainly knew after his own nephew visited the Auschwitz crematorium and saw a gassing in 1944.

What I think is unsupportable is that the Nazis were influenced in any way by the Mufti.

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Re: Grand Mufti of Jerusalem's role in the Holocaust

#21

Post by AJFFM » 27 Oct 2015, 17:11

Paul Lantos wrote: Right, but I'm not clear on the point of the anecdote. The mufti was clearly antisemitic, was clearly inspired by the Nazi activities, and probably had intimate awareness of the exterminations. How early he knew isn't clear (certainly not in 1940 because it hadn't even started yet), but he certainly knew after his own nephew visited the Auschwitz crematorium and saw a gassing in 1944.
And I never disputed that. Nor did I ever think it was beneath him to think/want a Holocaust type event against the Jews of Palestine (though I doubt he his plans went beyond to the wider Arab world) but I do think that he had knowledge about the Holocaust as it happened.
Paul Lantos wrote:
What I think is unsupportable is that the Nazis were influenced in any way by the Mufti.
And here we agree. The final solution was so systemic and organic to the Nazi regime that I would not be surprised to find evidence pointing that Hitler was relatively doveish compared with hardcore Nazis who lead the charge. To say that a nobody who was rejected by his own people inspired the Nazis to commit crimes they already started (the Einsatzgruppen have already killed at least half a million by the time of the meeting) is either ridiculous or, by the volume of "Arab-Nazi" and "Muslim-Nazi" literature in the last 15 years, deliberate.

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Re: Grand Mufti of Jerusalem's role in the Holocaust

#22

Post by Paul Lantos » 27 Oct 2015, 20:12

This stuff is part of the reason I avoid getting involved with survivor / descendant of survivor groups. The amalgamation of Holocaust history with current Zionism leads to really unfortunate biases -- revisionist views of the Holocaust like what Netanyahu expressed, as well as always painting the present in terms of existential threats.

Anyway, I don't think Hitler can be seen as dovish once you scratch the surface. I've read some extremely detailed historical accounts showing that the major radicalizations of the Holocaust were accompanied by flurries of anti-semitic speeches by Hitler, and were preceded by flurries of meetings between Hitler and Himmler +/- Heydrich. Christopher Browning, Peter Longerich, and Robert Wistrich all have books that make it pretty clear that Hitler was the driving force. In some cases this driving force set off unstoppable chain reactions -- for instance the expulsion of Reich Jews to eastern ghettos, something Hitler was clearly behind, created crises of overpopulation in Lodz, Lublin, Minsk, Riga, etc that were solved by the advent of extermination centers.

Longerich also points out an interesting chain of command by which Heydrich and the RHSA/SD were authorized via Goering in his capacity with the Four Year Plan. In other words mandates for extermination reached Heydrich from two directions: Hitler - Himmler - Heydrich via the SS, and Hitler - Goering - Heydrich via the Four Year Plan. The Four Year Plan was basically a policy to expropriate Jewish wealth, and the SD was responsible for carrying it out.

So while we may point to other direct actors in the Holocaust like Himmler and Eichmann and the like, the tendrils of decisionmaking reached through so many high level Nazis (including outside the SS altogether) that only Hitler is left as the common element.

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Re: Grand Mufti of Jerusalem's role in the Holocaust

#23

Post by stg 44 » 27 Oct 2015, 20:24

Paul Lantos wrote:The Four Year Plan was basically a policy to expropriate Jewish wealth, and the SD was responsible for carrying it out.
No it was a plan to build up a raw material base to enable a war under financial constraints, part of which was the seizure of Jewish property to establish that base. Seizure of Jewish property was a means to an end, rather than the end itself.

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Re: Grand Mufti of Jerusalem's role in the Holocaust

#24

Post by stg 44 » 27 Oct 2015, 20:26

4thskorpion wrote:
In 1970, the journalist Haviv Canaan disclosed that the mufti had been planning to build crematoriums for Jews in Samaria’s Dotan Valley. Canaan based his words on the testimony of Faiz Bei Adrisi, senior Arab officer in the Mandate police and commander of the village subdistrict of the Jerusalem district, who told him that Haj Amin aimed to enter Jerusalem at the head of his subordinates, the soldiers of the Arab Legion that was organized in the framework of the German army. His great plan was to build in the Dotan Valley, near Nablus, giant crematoriums of the Auschwitz kind, to which the Jews of the Land of Israel as well as the Jews of Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and even North Africa would be brought, so as to annihilate them with the methods used by the SS in the death camps of Europe.

http://jcpa.org/al-aksa-libel-advocate- ... -husseini/
So a Jewish security blog claims this guy made a claim in 1970. Without sources. Why should we even take this remotely seriously?

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Re: Grand Mufti of Jerusalem's role in the Holocaust

#25

Post by 4thskorpion » 28 Oct 2015, 00:05

stg 44 wrote:
4thskorpion wrote:
In 1970, the journalist Haviv Canaan disclosed that the mufti had been planning to build crematoriums for Jews in Samaria’s Dotan Valley. Canaan based his words on the testimony of Faiz Bei Adrisi, senior Arab officer in the Mandate police and commander of the village subdistrict of the Jerusalem district, who told him that Haj Amin aimed to enter Jerusalem at the head of his subordinates, the soldiers of the Arab Legion that was organized in the framework of the German army. His great plan was to build in the Dotan Valley, near Nablus, giant crematoriums of the Auschwitz kind, to which the Jews of the Land of Israel as well as the Jews of Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and even North Africa would be brought, so as to annihilate them with the methods used by the SS in the death camps of Europe.

http://jcpa.org/al-aksa-libel-advocate- ... -husseini/
So a Jewish security blog claims this guy made a claim in 1970. Without sources. Why should we even take this remotely seriously?

Haviv Canaan, "Hamufti Tichnen Misrafot l'Yehudim b'Emek Dotan" [The Mufti Planned Crematoriums for Jews in the Dotan Valley], Ha'aretz, March 2, 1970.

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Re: Grand Mufti of Jerusalem's role in the Holocaust

#26

Post by stg 44 » 28 Oct 2015, 00:22

4thskorpion wrote: Haviv Canaan, "Hamufti Tichnen Misrafot l'Yehudim b'Emek Dotan" [The Mufti Planned Crematoriums for Jews in the Dotan Valley], Ha'aretz, March 2, 1970.
The problem is the source is just some guy and its not like we can confirm anything about this 1970 Ha'aretz article.

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Re: Grand Mufti of Jerusalem's role in the Holocaust

#27

Post by Paul Lantos » 28 Oct 2015, 02:35

stg 44 wrote:
Paul Lantos wrote:The Four Year Plan was basically a policy to expropriate Jewish wealth, and the SD was responsible for carrying it out.
No it was a plan to build up a raw material base to enable a war under financial constraints, part of which was the seizure of Jewish property to establish that base. Seizure of Jewish property was a means to an end, rather than the end itself.
Sorry, I meant with respect to judenpolitik, I did not mean to summarize the whole program as such. Anyway because it enabled the SD to have police authority over Jewish interests the Four Year Plan constituted a major development in prewar judenpolitik. It also explains why Goering (rather than Himmler) had anything at all to do with the authorization order given to Heydrich to pursue the "final solution," and this in turn partly explains why it is impossible to argue that Hitler was passive in all this. Because the authorizations to Heydrich came to him from Hitler via two major arteries -- the Office of the Four Year Plan and the SS.

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Re: Grand Mufti of Jerusalem's role in the Holocaust

#28

Post by little grey rabbit » 28 Oct 2015, 02:41

Paul Lantos wrote:Right, but I'm not clear on the point of the anecdote. The mufti was clearly antisemitic, was clearly inspired by the Nazi activities, and probably had intimate awareness of the exterminations. How early he knew isn't clear (certainly not in 1940 because it hadn't even started yet), but he certainly knew after his own nephew visited the Auschwitz crematorium and saw a gassing in 1944.
Look, it is Holocaust History so anything goes, but is there a stronger evidential basis for the visit of the Mufti's nephew than this
The "Mufti" mentioned here is not the mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, but his nephew, Mussa Abdalla al-Husseini, who visited Auschwitz in 1944 accompanied by a German called Grobe. In 1951, the latter al-Husseini was responsible for the assassination of King Abdullah of Jordan. He was hanged in Amman. Author Jennie Lebel of Ramat Aviv gave me this information, for which I thank her.
Jennie Lebel appears to have been a radiographer and an amateur historian of the Yugoslav Jewish community, doubtless a formidable person and not necessarily an inaccurate source. But perhaps not someone that can be cited as an authority the way Raoul Hilberg can. Ms Lebel should have had a primary source to make such a claim and perhaps we need to know what it was before accepting it as gospel?

If you believe this survivor:
http://www.pipelinenews.org/2012/mar/06 ... salem.html
March 5, 2012 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - "It was a very hot day in June or July 1944 when I was at work in Monowitz, also known as Auschwitz III. And then I suddenly noticed a group of people who looked like actors. They were wearing long robes and strange headgear. Occasionally, internees did perform a play in the camp. I wanted to find out myself and as I walked towards that group I was stopped by a high ranking SS-officer whom I didn't know. He was from the main camp (Auschwitz I) or Birkenau (Auschwitz II). The officer asked me, 'What do you want?' 'I just wanted to know whether these people are actors or not. Is there going to be a stage performance tonight?' 'These people aren't actors,' the SS-officer told me. 'They are the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and his retinue.' I then asked him, 'What is he doing here?' 'He is paying a visit to the camp,' the SS-officer said. 'He lives in Berlin where he enjoys Hitler's personal protection. He is now paying a visit to Monowitz to see how the Jews are working themselves to death in factories. He is also in Auschwitz to see the gas chambers. When we have won the war he will return to Palestine to build gas chambers and kill the Jews who are living over there.'"
"Take Mr Bond to the back, spending 5 minutes explaining all our evil plans to him and then....throw him out of the plane."

And look, I don't want to travel over old ground, and you are welcome to believe the Armenian quote if you like. But the source that contained the quote about the Armenians also had Goering dancing on the conference table top at the end of meeting and was not held to be a reliable account by the Nuremberg tribunal. Whereas there were two other people who made minutes to that meeting and didn't include that quote.

But then again, its Holocaust History, anything goes.

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Re: Grand Mufti of Jerusalem's role in the Holocaust

#29

Post by David Thompson » 28 Oct 2015, 07:16

little grey rabbit -- You wrote:
Look, it is Holocaust History so anything goes . . .

and
But then again, its Holocaust History, anything goes
Repeating your opinion in the form of a slogan doesn't make make it true, but more tiresome for serious readers.

For interested readers -- There are previous discussions of the Grand Mufti and the holocaust here, at:

Muslim dignitaries visit Auschwitz (2011)
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=175173
Dieter Wisliceny at Nuremberg and Mufti / Holocaust quote (2011)
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=181493
'Hitler's holocaust plan for Jews in Palestine stopped' (2006)
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=99345
The Grand Mufti? (2006)
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=105893

There is also an informative 2006 post by Michael Mills, giving Paul Schmidt's Foreign Ministry notes of the Hitler-Mufti meeting at
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 64#p943164

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Re: Grand Mufti of Jerusalem's role in the Holocaust

#30

Post by pugsville » 28 Oct 2015, 13:19

This claim has been dismissed as ridiculous and without foundation by many historians.
It is laughable. it is crack pot stuff.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/o ... aust-claim

"Yad Vashem’s chief historian, Prof Dina Porat, told the Israeli news website Ynet that Netanyahu’s claims were incorrect. “You cannot say that it was the mufti who gave Hitler the idea to kill or burn Jews. It’s not true. Their meeting occurred after a series of events that point to this.”"

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