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

[little grey rabbit]

Repeating your opinion in the form of a slogan doesn't make make it true, but more tiresome for serious readers.

I'm sorry to hear that, if there is one thing I hate, it is being tiresome.

Let me try and summarize as best I can the state of play regarding the decision to commence the Holocaust.
The overwhelming majority of historians believe the decision had been taken by the time of the Wannsee conference in January 1942, a large majority (but somewhat less), believe that on June 22 1941 it was still the goal of the Reich to genuinely resettle Jews, either resurrecting the old Polish scheme of colonizing Madagascar or by using territories opened up to the East. At some point between these two dates the words "resettlement", "evacuation", and "immigration" changed from being innocent to being euphemistic. But there is no agreement when.

I would say there are broadly two camps, which I will call the Camp of the Rationale and the Camp of the Facts on the Ground.
The Camp of the Rationale tries to date the decision by looking for underlying reason and such historians tend to look at the defeat before Moscow and/or Pearl Harbour as the trigger. The defeat before Moscow supposedly meaning suitable territories would not become available, Pearl Harbor as revenge on American Jews for supposedly manipulating the US into the war (although of course it was Germany who made the first declaration) So these historians date the decision to December 1941.
The Camp of the Facts on Ground tend to say during June X happened, during July Y happened and during August Z happened and these historians tend to date the decision to move to euphemistic language as around August 1941 - with various shades of opinion in between.

So using Michael Mills provided minutes of 28th November 1941 (while the Germans were still advancing - just, the counter attack is usually dated 5 December) what does this tell us?

The Fuhrer replied that Germany's fundamental attitude on these questions, as the Mufti himself had already stated, was clear. Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews. That naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine, which was nothing other than a center, in the form of a state, for the exercise of destructive influence by Jewish interests. Germany was also aware that the assertion that the Jews were carrying out the functions of economic pioneers in Palestine was a lie. The work there was done only by the Arabs, not by the Jews. Germany was resolved, step by step, to ask one European nation after the other to solve its Jewish problem, and at the proper time to direct a similar appeal to non-European nations as well.

Now assuming that we have received the text of this meeting unaltered or tampered with in anyw ay, it strikes me the language used is vague and undetermined that there must be a shared understanding between the two. If there was an explicit goal of resettlement in the Eastern territories why isn't it clearly stated? Supposed you were on the end of such a monologue, wouldn't you be moved to ask: "By the way what precisely do you mean by "solved the Jewish problem."?
So can we assume that there is a shared understanding between the two and the Holocaust decision has already been taken? By why is Hitler confiding in a foreign politician at this early stage anyway? Why not keep up the pretense of resettlement to the East when such a subterfuge would cost nothing? Even assuming the Mufti is going to say that's a great idea, what about the risk it will leak from his entourage?

Why not do what (apparently) Alfred Rosenberg did?

February 10, 1942

STOCKHOLM (Feb. 9)

Berlin correspondents of Swedish daily newspapers report that the Nazi authorities in the German capital are still determined to create a vast “Jewish reservation” in Eastern Europe and are going ahead with detailed plans for such a set-up. They report that these plans are being drawn up by the Department of Jewish Questions in the Ministry for the German-occupied territories of the East, which is headed by Dr. Alfred Rosenberg.

Based on the Nazis avowed aim “of ridding Europe of the Jews,” the Rosenberg project contemplates a huge Jewish-inhabited region enclosed by barbed wire and guarded by Nazi sentries, in which Jews will be completely isolated from the rest of the world and will be exploited to meet the Nazis’ economic needs. Indicating the thoroughness with which Jews are being evicted from the Reich is the report that Frankfort-on-the-Main, which at the time of Hitler’s seizure of power had a Jewish population of about 26,000, is now being made “Judenrein.”

Or was the Mufti in the loop and Rosenberg kept out? What seems likely is either the written record has been tampered with or that understandings were shared between the Mufti and Hitler that do not appear there.

That is why I say there are no answers to these questions and people are free to believe whatever they like since the issue can never be definitively resolved one way or the other. Whereas in most historical questions we can assume there is an underlying reality that while it may be obscured, possibly in the future they might be resolved. In my opinion that is not the case with holocaust history, which this sub branch it is more a situation Truth is Beauty and Beauty Truth, that is all ye know and all ye need to know. Some people like the idea of the Mufti encouraged Hitler to the holocaust - you can find data to support such a view, some people don't.

However, the minutes Michael Mills provided does help shed light on Jennie Lebel's claim re the Mufti's nephew in summer 1944. Apparently the person supposed to be accompanying either uncle or nephew was a Fritz Grobba (not a German called Grobe) and google provides a lot of information regarding him.
In July 1942 he accompanied 4 Arabs (but not the Mufti) to inspect Sachsenhausen. Although Sachsenhausen was a camp with very few Jews (on December 12 1942 there were only 46 Jews, although there may have been more in July), the visitors were apparently particularly interested in the their situation (in a schadenfreude sense is the impression given).

There is an article easily found by Google: "„Der Geist aus der Lampe“: Fritz Grobba und Berlins Politik im Nahen und Mittleren Orient" by Wolfgang G. Schwanitz
This gives the following data about Herr Grobba
24.12.1942 Zweigstelle der Deutschen Archiv-Kommission in Paris zuge-
teilt, liest Orient-Akten
29.07.1943 Professor Jäschke bestätigt in einer ordentlichen Prüfung
Grobbas türkische Sprachkenntnisse
03.04.1944 Rückkehr nach Deutschland ins Auswärtige Amt, im Archiv
Glogau bei Hermsdorf
10.06.1944 Versetzung in den einstweiligen Ruhestand, noch bis Jahres-
ende im Auswärtigen Amt
30.09.1944 freigegeben zum Arbeitseinsatz in der Rüstungsindustrie im
Zuge der durch Hitler angeordneten Aktion „Totaler Krieg“,
Grobba kommt zur Landesregierung Dresdens, Wehrkreis IVa

It doesn't absolutely disprove Lebel's claim that he visited Auschwitz in the summer of 1944, but I would suggest it renders it unlikely. The fact that Grobba didn't visit, doesn't mean the Mufti or his nephew didn't visit with someone else, but it renders Lebel an unreliable secondary source for such a claim.
As far as Grobba goes, I would suggest most likely someone confused his trip to Sachsenhausen in July 1942 with Auschwitz. As regards to where that leaves the visit by the Mufti and/or his nephew in 1944 - there is still the eye-witness testimony. But the eyewitness testimony all claim it was the uncle.

[David Thompson]

little grey rabbit -- You wrote:

Now assuming that we have received the text of this meeting unaltered or tampered with in anyw ay, [. . .]

You, and other interested readers, may find the explanation of sources in these documents to be helpful. This is the extent of the series I found posted online in 2012:

Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918-45, Series D, vol. 4
https://archive.org/details/documentsongerma014727mbp
Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918-45, Series D, vol. 5
https://archive.org/details/DocumentsOn ... 1937-March
Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918-45, Series D, vol. 6
https://archive.org/details/DocumentsOn ... rch-august
Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918-45, Series D, vol. 7
https://archive.org/details/DocumentsOn ... i-August9-
Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918-45, Series D, vol. 8
https://archive.org/details/documentsongerma014726mbp
Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918-45, Series D, vol. 12
https://archive.org/details/DocumentsOn ... uary1-June
Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918-45, Series D, vol.13
https://archive.org/details/DocumentsOn ... VolumeXiii

[Paul Lantos]

The overwhelming majority of historians believe the decision had been taken by the time of the Wannsee conference in January 1942, a large majority (but somewhat less), believe that on June 22 1941 it was still the goal of the Reich to genuinely resettle Jews, either resurrecting the old Polish scheme of colonizing Madagascar or by using territories opened up to the East.

This discussion all depends what on decision you refer to. There is a cogent case to be made that this decision had not been made at the time of Wannsee. Why was Hitler confiding in foreign leaders? Who knows, but it's very likely that his entertainment of extermination turned from fantasy to reality under the cover of "total war" after Moscow killed once and for all the pretense of a quick decisive war.

Anyway at Wannsee itself resettlement and remained part of the discussion. I'd suggest a close look at Peter Longerich's study in which he argues very convincingly that there was a chronology of major Jewish policy decisions, the critical one being in the late spring of 1942:

1) Extermination of all accessible Jews would be completed before the end of the war
2) Any pretense of resettlement was abandoned
3) The scope of Jews retained for slave labor was diminished

These three were NOT the case at Wannsee, at which time a post-war solution was still envisioned, a much larger percent of Jews were retained for work than in the following summer of 1942, and there was still a pretense of resettlement.

These are explored in great depth in his book Holocaust and his book Heinrich Himmler: A Life.

But you can read it in condensed form in his outstanding USHMM lecture on the same topic:

http://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/20050726-longerich.pdf

Regarding the resettlement issue, even in the early spring of 1942 Jews expelled from the Reich, Austria, and other occupied countries were often deposited in eastern ghettos. Extermination sites like Belzec, Chelmno, and Maly-Trostinets in particular (but probably also Ponary and elsewhere) were functioning to "clear out" indigenous Jews in order to make room for Jews deported from elsewhere. This is best known with Lodz, where there was the late 1941 plan to dump 60,000 Reich Jews (I think it only amounted to 20,000 in the end), and the advent of Chelmno was essentially an effort to make room for them in the already overcrowded Lodz.

So many of these Polish and Baltic ghettos became dumping grounds after the indigenous Jews were killed. After a while the process would repeat itself, and there would be selections of able bodied workers at the time. The anecdote of Himmler getting angry at Jeckeln for killing 5000 Reich Jews in Minsk (in late 1941) is a further argument that at the time these deportations were seen as a resettlement and not purely for exterminatoin.

But starting particularly in the spring and summer of 1942 the trains began to go directly to the death camps without dumping the Jews in ghettos first. The trains going to Belzec and Sobibor often stopped in either Lublin or Lvov / Janowska first for a selection, then went on to the death camps. This, Longerich points out, was an uncoupling of extermination from the resettlement program.

This happened a few months AFTER Wannsee -- and it seems to have been not just a set of local radicalizations but rather a systematic policy change. It coincides with other simultaneous events: increased activity at Auschwitz for international deportees (not simply killing the exhausted Schmeldt workers), increased diplomatic efforts to import Jews from other occupied and allied countries, the second wave of exterminations in the USSR, and most dramatically the opening of Treblinka -- and it coincided with a frenetic series of meetings between Hitler and Himmler following Heydrich's death.

So I'm not disputing what you're saying except insofar as the most "critical" radicalization in extermination policy had NOT actually happened at the time of Wannsee.

Christopher Browning has a counterargument that presents October 1941 as the critical decision period. Longerich does not really dispute this, except insofar as he emphasizes the additional radicalization that happened later.

http://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/20050728-browning.pdf

[David Thompson]

The NS-regime's decision to start killing Jews is off-topic in this thread, unless there is some link to the Grand Mufti. For those who want to discuss the timing of that decision, we already have a number of open threads on the subject. Please use them.

A challenge to Michael Mills and others
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=105490

Primary evidence about Hitler
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?p=627237
Hitler and Murders in Poland 1939-1940 (1939-40)
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=24138
Himmler's "Special Mission from the Fuehrer"
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=61802
Himmler, Heydrich and the Fuehrer Order
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=24139
The Final Solution: Why not kill them immediately?
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=69369
Code words "farther east" - 1941
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=185514
What did the Wannsee Conference decide?
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=66314

[Paul Lantos]

The NS-regime's decision to start killing Jews is off-topic in this thread, unless there is some link to the Grand Mufti.

David, I would respectfully disagree. The primary counterargument to any link to the Grand Mufti is that the Nazi regime's decision was temporally and structurally independent of his influences. Since we know when he visited Hitler and how the dynamic of the extermination program evolved, this conversation directly contradicts the notion of any link. Moreover, every scholar who has contradicted Netanyahu's statement has invoked some aspect of the Nazi regime's independent policy evolution, so apparently most others think the conversation is relevant.

But if it helps:
In my previous post I have listed a variety of details that have no known connection to the Grand Mufti, and therefore he was unlikely to have been influential.

[73troy]

In his book Islam and Nazi Germany's War David Motadel said the meeting between Hitler and the Mufti contained nothing of substance.

Motadel wrote on page 42, "Their conversation was limited to an exchange of empty courtesies and the affirmation that they were fighting against common enemies--the British, Jews and Bolshevism. When al-Husayni asked Hitler for a written guarantee of Arab, and especially Palestinian, independence, the dictator evaded the issue. After al-Husayni's repeated request, Hitler told him that in the current state of the war it was too early for these kinds of questions but asserted his 'uncompromising fight against the Jews' which also included the Jews of the Arab lands. Another request for a meeting with Hitler in 1943 was unsuccessful."

Sounds like a quick hello, yes we agree in principle, now don't let the door hit you on the way out, rather than the Mufti planting the idea of the Holocaust in Hitler's mind. It would also seem to me that what al-Husayni really wanted was Hitler's guarantee on a Palestinian State and he could not even obtain that. So, yes, it would appear that Netanyahu was way off base.

[domics]

In his book Islam and Nazi Germany's War Motadel wrote on page 42, " When al-Husayni asked Hitler for a written guarantee of Arab, and especially Palestinian, independence, the dictator evaded the issue...

Strange recostruction from Motadel as al-Husayni already had such a letter: see document no. 293:
https://archive.org/stream/DocumentsOnG ... 9/mode/2up

[UMachine]

Thank you domics.I missed any mention of Husseini's visit with Mussolini in this thread....

[AJFFM]

In his book Islam and Nazi Germany's War Motadel wrote on page 42, " When al-Husayni asked Hitler for a written guarantee of Arab, and especially Palestinian, independence, the dictator evaded the issue...

Strange recostruction from Motadel as al-Husayni already had such a letter: see document no. 293:
https://archive.org/stream/DocumentsOnG ... 9/mode/2up

This letter was written in April 41 without any explicit commitments especially when we know that at the time Germany already controlled one Arab country and the situation of their Arab citizens (actually they were not even citizens in their own country) was just about as bad as it was before German presence.

The November meeting, where the supposed inspiration for the Holocaust came, is the one under question and again the results were quite frank. No real commitment.

[UMachine]

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?

Faiz Bei Adrisi is also used as a source of information for web sources concerning the Chemical Assault.Not much information that I can find about him....

[UMachine]

Farhud - the pogrom carried out against the Jewish population of Baghdad, Iraq, on June 1–2, 1941.

The Farhud: Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust by Edwin Black.

The Farhud.png

BBC: Farhud memories: Baghdad's 1941 slaughter of the Jews

Again, the "Mufti" was a nobody who inherited his "daddy's" old job and had little if any influence either in Palestine or outside of it. Making him this legendary figure who toyed with the world is no less idiotic than the conspiracy theories about Freemasonry and the Protocols of the Elder of Zion.

The Farhud (which was not limited to Jews as propaganda would tell you but none the less affected them disproportionately) was perpetrated by Rashid Ali Al Kailani (or Al-Gaylani) who was no stranger to stirring up ethno-religious tensions for political gain as he did by rallying the Kurds against the Assyrians in the infamous massacres in Nineveh in the late 20s early 30s. Of course there was anti-Jewish sentiment in Iraq for various reasons but the prime mover was defeat of Al-Gaylani who thought the Nazis would win and "liberate" Iraq.

As for the rest of Arab nationalists who courted Nazi Germany, they were no different than any other European nationalist who did that nor were they in power when Israel was created and the exodus began (an exodus that began well before WWII but that is a different story). They majority of them never reached power and those who did (Sadat) were simply too minor players to have had any influence during the war.

Indeed the majority of Arab nationalists at the time were socialists/communists rather than fascists and were firmly in the Allies camp for ideological reasons.

If the Mufti was a nobody,why did the British plan to deport him to the Seychelles?

Page 8 of The Royal Navy and the Palestine Patrol states that the British planned to arrest Husseini at 1500 17 July 1937,fly him to Haifa and place him on board the HMS Repulse.

I believe Husseini did request that a Holocaust take place...in Palestine.

[AJFFM]

If the Mufti was a nobody,why did the British plan to deport him to the Seychelles?

Page 8 of The Royal Navy and the Palestine Patrol states that the British planned to arrest Husseini at 1500 17 July 1937,fly him to Haifa and place him on board the HMS Repulse.

Let me put this into context. He was a nobody in the general scheme of things but due to his wealth and position (both as I said inherited from daddy) he was a rabble rouser with local influence.

He was a minor character before 39 (he was not even consulted by the Palestinian representatives during the White Paper negotiations or had any real role in the revolt). He rose to relative prominence in Iraq largely because his Nazi connections (as I said, virtually no major Arab leader was in bed with the Nazis by the time of the war) and political opportunists like Mr. Al-Gaylani realised how valuable he was.

As for deporting him, the British deported many people but only a limited few had any significance.

I believe Husseini did request that a Holocaust take place...in Palestine.

Maybe. That doesn't make him the one "inspiring" Hitler.

[UMachine]

If the Mufti was a nobody,why did the British plan to deport him to the Seychelles?

Page 8 of The Royal Navy and the Palestine Patrol states that the British planned to arrest Husseini at 1500 17 July 1937,fly him to Haifa and place him on board the HMS Repulse.

He was a minor character before 39 (he was not even consulted by the Palestinian representatives during the White Paper negotiations or had any real role in the revolt). He rose to relative prominence in Iraq largely because his Nazi connections (as I said, virtually no major Arab leader was in bed with the Nazis by the time of the war) and political opportunists like Mr. Al-Gaylani realised how valuable he was.

As for deporting him, the British deported many people but only a limited few had any significance.

Let me put this into context. He was a nobody in the general scheme of things but due to his wealth and position (both as I said inherited from daddy) he was a rabble rouser with local influence.

I believe Husseini did request that a Holocaust take place...in Palestine.

Maybe. That doesn't make him the one "inspiring" Hitler.

The British have a long history of margininalizing selected groups and/or their leaders.To the local Jewish population he appears to have been quite scary.I agree that Hitler didn't need any directions.Netanyahu is a former Sayeret Matkal commando.The mysterious founder Avraham Arnan was a former Palmach fighter...I believe Bibi knows the real story concerning the Holocaust very nearly coming to the Holy Land.

[AJFFM]

The British have a long history of margininalizing selected groups and/or their leaders.To the local Jewish population he appears to have been quite scary.I agree that Hitler didn't need any directions.Netanyahu is a former Sayeret Matkal commando.The mysterious founder Avraham Arnan was a former Palmach fighter...I believe Bibi knows the real story concerning the Holocaust very nearly coming to the Holy Land.

He was not the most scary of the Palestinian leaders at the time. He commanded no militia nor as I said was as big politically as others but he had influence (because of his family connection and wealth not support) and such men had potential and it was natural for the British (or any occupying force) to marginalise or even imprison them just in case. Had he been too hot politically, like the political leadership of the Zionist movement or Nationalist movement in Palestine, the British would do what they did to Ghandi, keep him near and under their sights, but since was at best a 2nd class leader they exiled him.

And Netanyahu was in the IAF, his brother was in SM and was killed in the famous Entebbe raid.

[David Thompson]

UMachine -- You wrote:

I believe Bibi knows the real story concerning the Holocaust very nearly coming to the Holy Land.

If he does, he's not offering any proof.