Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks at the World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem about the role of the former grand mufti of Jerusalem in the Holocaust have engendered a massive and mostly critical response. As the authors of the book “Icon of Evil: Hitler’s Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam,” we feel it is important to clarify precisely the mufti’s role in those tragic days.
Netanyahu was incorrect in asserting that Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, gave Hitler the idea of annihilating the Jews of Europe during World War II. “Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews,” said Netanyahu, stating that the mufti protested to Hitler that “they’ll all come here,” referring to Palestine. “‘So what shall I do with them?’” Netanyahu quoted Hitler as asking al-Husseini. “He said, ‘Burn them.’”
The problem with Netanyahu’s statement, as several Israeli historians and politicians have pointed out, is that there is no evidence of such a conversation.
The Nazi plans for exterminating the Jews predated al-Husseini’s arrival in Berlin and his meeting with Hitler on Nov. 28, 1941. While al-Husseini would play a prominent role in encouraging and accelerating the Final Solution, there is no evidence that the mufti had any part in the initial Nazi decision to exterminate the Jews. Even Moshe Ya’alon, Israel’s defense minister and a senior member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, questioned the historical accuracy of the prime minister’s statement, saying: “History is actually very, very clear. Hitler initiated it. Haj Amin al-Husseini joined him.” Yet Netanyahu was correct in focusing renewed attention on al-Husseini’s complicity in the extermination.
There is no doubt that Hitler was intent on exterminating the Jews throughout his years in politics. From his earliest speeches in the 1920s to his infamous address to the Reichstag on Jan. 30, 1939, Hitler made no secret of his ultimate goal for the Jews. It is also true that al-Husseini was maniacal in his Jew-hatred for many years before he met Hitler in Berlin in 1941.
As one of the founders of the Muslim Brotherhood, the mufti was instrumental in inciting the pogrom-like anti-Jewish Arab Palestinian riots of 1920 and 1929, as well as the Arab Revolt of 1936, resulting in the murder of hundreds of Palestine’s Jews. In World War II, he was an active collaborator in the murder of the Jews of Europe. Had Hitler’s General Erwin Rommel won the battle of El Alamein in Egypt in 1942, and had the Nazi armies gone on to conquer Palestine and the Middle East as Hitler hoped, there is little doubt the mufti would have played a central role in exterminating the 450,000 Jews then in Palestine.
Recent revelations have documented Nazi plans, formulated in 1942, to build death camps, modeled after Auschwitz, in Tel Aviv and Jaffa in their “liberated Palestine.” SS Obersturmbannfuhrer Walther Rauff, one of Adolf Eichmann’s most trusted deputies, was assigned the task of implementing those plans. Only the defeat of Rommel’s army at El Alamein prevented them from being implemented.
When the mufti arrived in Berlin in November 1941, the Nazi plans for the annihilation of the Jews — contrary to Netanyahu’s assertions — had already been formulated without al-Husseini’s inspiration. Did, however, the mufti subsequently encourage and participate in the extermination of the Jews? The answer is an unequivocal yes.
Al-Husseini’s meeting with Hitler on Nov. 28, 1941 is documented both in German archives and his own diary. They shared objectives: the removal of Great Britain from the Middle East and destruction of the Jews.
Al-Husseini established close relationships with Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German Foreign Minister, Heinrich Himmler, the architect of genocide, and Eichmann, the man who ensured the implementation of the Final Solution. At the Nuremberg Trials, Dieter Wisliceny, one of Eichmann’s senior deputies, testified that the mufti “was one of Eichmann’s best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination process. I heard him say that accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chamber of Auschwitz.”
In 1943, Himmler placed al-Husseini in charge of recruiting Muslims into elite units to serve in the Nazi-occupied Balkans, North Africa and the Middle East. As many as 100,000 Muslims in Europe were recruited by the mufti and fought for Germany during World War II in divisions of the Waffen-SS.
Based in Berlin throughout the Holocaust years, and working closely with Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich’s propaganda minister, the mufti organized propaganda broadcasts throughout the Arab world. In one of his most notorious radio broadcasts, on March 1, 1944, the mufti urged his fellow Arabs to murder their Jewish neighbors: “Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history and religion.” In another radio broadcast, on Sept. 21, 1944, al-Husseini revealed that he knew that 5 million Jews had already been exterminated.
Haj Amin al-Husseini should have been indicted as a war criminal at Nuremberg, but was not because the British, French and Yugoslavian governments feared a backlash from the Muslim world. Instead, in 1946, he escaped Europe, arrived in Cairo and was greeted as a hero. He became mentor to young radical Islamists and members of the Muslim Brotherhood, including Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat and the mufti’s cousin, 17-year-old Yasser Arafat. When al-Husseini died in 1974, Arafat eulogized him as his hero and mentor.
Was Prime Minister Netanyahu correct in blaming the mufti for the Holocaust? It would have been more precise to say that while he didn’t come up with the idea, the mufti had full knowledge of, encouraged and actively collaborated in the Holocaust.
David G. Dalin, a Bay Area native now living in Boca Raton, Florida, and John F. Rothmann of San Francisco are the authors of “Icon of Evil: Hitler’s Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam” (Random House, 2008).