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

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

#196

Post by CogCalgary » 06 Mar 2023, 11:53

michael mills wrote:
06 Mar 2023, 07:25
Probably because no publisher has seen any prospect of financial gain from having them translated and published.
Translation and digital books are expensive?
I would think that politics has had a far greater influence on that decision.
But I have to admit I am biased about Husayni.
The ex told me that her father really liked Husayni.
Saw him in Albania when he was training some troops for OVRA.She got all animated describing his zeal for him.Her father was a diehard anti Semite.
The Italians had a good network in the M.E.
I have no doubt that Husayni would be all in for any plan to eliminate the Jews.But that is just my personal opinion.

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

#197

Post by michael mills » 06 Mar 2023, 13:18

If you have information about the activities of Haj Amin Al-Husyani that are hitherto unknown, such as training troops in Albania (which seems unlikely as he was not a military specialist), perhaps you should write a book about it, and subject it to peer review by reputable historians.


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

#198

Post by CogCalgary » 06 Mar 2023, 15:33

Husayni did not train troops.OVRA trained and raised some formations.Very little is actually known.
I see that the Wiki entry on Husayni now contains some comical British disinformation.
I wouldn't bother trying to get the approval of "historians" when it comes to the M.E.

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

#199

Post by michael mills » 06 Mar 2023, 23:03

If Al-Husayni did not train troops in Albania, then the logical conclusion is that your ex-wife's father cannot have seen him there doing so.

Perhaps your ex-wife's father was engaging in lurid embellishment. Or could it have been your ex-wife who was doing so? You say she "got all animated".

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

#200

Post by CogCalgary » 07 Mar 2023, 01:26

Husayni reviewed troops.Yes she got animated,because her father really admired Husayni.Thought he was a real go getter."The guy with the big hat."
I seem to recall that you were not even aware of OVRA just a few years ago.Husayni and OVRA were quite cozy as evidenced by their provision of a diplomatic passport.

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

#201

Post by michael mills » 07 Mar 2023, 12:13

Whatver may have been Al-Husayni's relationship with OVRA, it is not really relevant to the topic of this thread, since OVRA as an Italian political police organisation, did not play any role in the Holocaust.

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

#202

Post by wm » 07 Mar 2023, 12:33

The Mufti's other military-related activities included helping to recruit Muslims for Yugoslavia and Albania in 1943 to fight in Croatia and Bosnia against the Communist forces of Tito and the Serbian forces of Draža Mihailović.
He also supported the anti-Communist efforts of the Muslim Crimean Tartars.

Finally, in 1944 and early 1945, he briefed sabotage expeditions in Palestine, Iraq, and Transjordan.
The results of these efforts were an abysmal failure. The Arab Legion's activities were insignificant and those of the Muslim troops in the Balkans were a fiasco. The sabotage teams in Arab countries were either captured or killed.

But the failure lay less with Amin, who played little part in the actual military and strategic planning, than with Germany, which failed to adequately mobilize its diplomatic, propaganda, and military machine for a challenge to the Allies in the Middle East.
The Mufti of Jerusalem: Al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni and the Palestinian National Movement by Philip Mattar

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

#203

Post by wm » 07 Mar 2023, 13:14

After the war, Zionist groups called on Britain to try the Mufti on charges of collaboration or treason. Britain replied that since he was not a British subject he could be tried neither as a traitor nor as a collaborator.
The Foreign Office asked the High Commissioner of Palestine for evidence concerning the Mufti's wrongdoing in Palestine, but the High Commissioner had none.

The Zionists likewise sought the Mufti's indictment as a war criminal who had collaborated in the extermination of the Jews. To this end, the Jewish Agency for Palestine sent the British Foreign Office a number of documents on February 26, 1946, which they hoped would result in such a trial. These included letters captured in 1945 which had been written by the Mufti—mostly in unsigned draft form—in an effort to thwart Axis plans to exchange Germans residing in Palestine for Jews from German-controlled territory in 1943 and 1944.

The Zionist documents were not taken seriously by the British. In a memo for internal consumption, a Foreign Office official wrote: "The material in this paper is very vague and would certainly not be considered as decisive evidence against the Mufti for having participated in any atrocities against the Jews."
Other officials wrote, also for internal use, that the Zionists were using this meager evidence for propaganda purposes, to discredit the Mufti and the Palestinians. Still another official concluded that though the Mufti had committed acts hostile to the Allies he "is not responsible for acts of atrocity according to our official information."
This was true, but it was also likely the British were not eager to try the Mufti, who was still popular in the Arab world at a time when they were involved in treaty negotiations with the Egyptians and in trying to solve the Palestine problem.

The Mufti was never brought to trial, but the issue of his role in Nazi Germany resurfaced during the 1961 Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. At that time, a team of Israeli police under Shlomo Ben-Elkanah compiled hundreds of pages of documents concerning contacts between the Mufti and Germans between 1933 and 1944.
Yet most of the evidence was not new and had been publicized in 1946 by the Jewish Agency, particularly the testimonies of Kasztner and Wisliczeny concerning the Mufti's association with Eichmann and his attempts to stop Jewish emigration to Palestine.
Eichmann's own testimony confirmed that the Mufti and Eichmann were not close associates, and that Wisliczeny had mistaken Musa 'Abdullah al-Husayni for the Mufti.
...
Indeed, the thousands of captured German documents used by the many writers on the subject have produced no hard evidence of the Mufti's participation in atrocities beyond his attempts to stop the Jewish emigration to Palestine that he saw as leading to displacement or eviction of his own people.
The Mufti of Jerusalem: Al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni and the Palestinian National Movement by Philip Mattar

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

#204

Post by CogCalgary » 07 Mar 2023, 14:08

michael mills wrote:
07 Mar 2023, 12:13
Whatver may have been Al-Husayni's relationship with OVRA, it is not really relevant to the topic of this thread, since OVRA as an Italian political police organisation, did not play any role in the Holocaust.
OVRA was always behind the scenes.Check the Behind the Battle Lines thread.Italian Jews were spared.Libyan and Tunisian Jews were not.

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

#205

Post by CogCalgary » 07 Mar 2023, 14:21

wm wrote:
07 Mar 2023, 12:33
The Mufti's other military-related activities included helping to recruit Muslims for Yugoslavia and Albania in 1943 to fight in Croatia and Bosnia against the Communist forces of Tito and the Serbian forces of Draža Mihailović.
He also supported the anti-Communist efforts of the Muslim Crimean Tartars.

Finally, in 1944 and early 1945, he briefed sabotage expeditions in Palestine, Iraq, and Transjordan.
The results of these efforts were an abysmal failure. The Arab Legion's activities were insignificant and those of the Muslim troops in the Balkans were a fiasco. The sabotage teams in Arab countries were either captured or killed.

But the failure lay less with Amin, who played little part in the actual military and strategic planning, than with Germany, which failed to adequately mobilize its diplomatic, propaganda, and military machine for a challenge to the Allies in the Middle East.
The Mufti of Jerusalem: Al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni and the Palestinian National Movement by Philip Mattar
And parts of this are where I believe the disinformation is being disseminated.Can you name these missions in Palestine,Iraq and Transjordan?Not 44-45.
1941 is my firm belief.

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

#206

Post by wm » 07 Mar 2023, 15:02

The source for that is:
source.png

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

#207

Post by CogCalgary » 07 Mar 2023, 15:17

wm wrote:
07 Mar 2023, 15:02
The source for that is:
source.png
Any more details?About 20 years ago the Nationsl Archives released a ludicrous story about 3,yes THREE German paratroopers in Palestine whose mission was to raise an insurrection. Apparently they brought gold to bribe the inhabitants.What are three paras going to be able to accomplish late in the war?I would really like to see which missions they are claiming in this document.
Lots and lots of disinformation continues to swirl around this region.

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

#208

Post by CogCalgary » 07 Mar 2023, 15:18

CogCalgary wrote:
07 Mar 2023, 15:17
wm wrote:
07 Mar 2023, 15:02
The source for that is:
source.png
Any more details?About 20 years ago the Nationsl Archives released a ludicrous story about 3,yes THREE German paratroopers in Palestine whose mission was to raise an insurrection. Apparently they brought gold to bribe the inhabitants.What are three paras going to be able to accomplish late in the war?I would really like to see which missions they are claiming in this document.
Lots and lots of disinformation continues to swirl around this region.
And who is Khalil Rassoul?

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

#209

Post by steve248 » 07 Mar 2023, 15:54

I have no historical interest in the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. I know he figures in a variety of British files available at UK National Archives. Files from the Colonial and Foreign Offices, MI 5 name files and even an intercepted and decrypted German radio message
than was part of a selection of decrypted messages given to Prime Minister Churchill on 1 May 1943 (available in file HW 1/1655):
"Yugoslavia: visit by Grand Mufti of Jerusalem to Croatia considered by Germans on Apr 26 to have had good effect on Moslems, particularly with regard to recruiting for Moslem SS division, German High Command requested to arrange similar tour by Mufti to Albania with Italian agreement."

1941 may be the firm belief of the poster above, but German sabotage missions to the Middle East were carried out 1941 to 1944. The ones to Palestine and Transjordan were abysmal failures; the agents being captured within a day or two. These were mainly organized by the SD. These attempts were "ludicrous" but hardly the fault of the Allies. Fortunately for the Allies, SD attempts to foment resistance in the Middle East simply shows how inept the SD was in choice of objectives and agents. How much was known of these missions by the Mufti may be answered in one of his MI 5 name files (KV 2/2084 to 2092) which can be downloaded for free from https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ - click on "search the catalogue" and enter the first file reference in the top box and follow instructions. You will have to register but this is simply giving an email address. Nothing onerous.

SD attempts at infiltrating agents into Palestine can also be found in MI 5 name files available at UK National Archives: KV 2/203 (a former Gestapo employee), KV 2/400, and KV 2/1163 (a German Jew released from Dachau). I do not know whether these have been digitized and available for download; there are other files of agents trained by the SD in Athens and sent overland via Turkey.

Going back to the Mufti in what became Yugoslavia, postwar the Yugoslavs several times requested the extradition of the Mufti for "atrocities" and war crimes.

As regards disinformation in the matters posted here can CogCalgary quote a source (archival or published) about this.

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

#210

Post by CogCalgary » 07 Mar 2023, 17:47

May 1941
The Palmach 23,national heroes with their own commemorative holiday in Israel.BBC had a story in the past few years,multiple sources.Likely Intel from OVRA as the Italians met them at sea,lpossibly on a Vichy French watercraft.
The death of David Raziel in Iraq by a German warplane as he crossed a bridge,May 1941.Haaretz.Well know hero to the Israelis.Likely Intel from OVRA
The personal biographer of David Ben Gurion,Michael Bar -Zohar.The Quest For The Red Prince.
He mentions the chemical assault in Palestine.
This is June 1941.I am certain of this date but cannot comment further at this time.

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