Legacy of the Mufti and Hitler: The facts that are known.

By: David Bedein & Rabbi Dr.Bernhard Rosenberg

[Following the surprise that greeted the statement of the Prime Minister of Israel that the Mufti of Jerusalem inspired Hitler to initiate the “final solution” to murder the Jews of Europe, the time has come to clear the air and state the facts as we know them. The following article is excerpted from a paper that I delivered at an Israel Knesset Forum on Holocaust Remembrance Day, 2012]

The titular leader of the Palestinian Arab community in the previous generation: Haj Amin Al Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, forged a pact with Adolf Hitler on November 28, 1941, one week before the Wannasee conference, originally scheduled for December 9, 1941, yet was postponed by one month, due to the attack on Pearl Harbor only two days before, and one day before Hitler declared war on the US, on December 10, 1941.

The protocols of the Hitler -Mufti pact were presented as evidence against the Mufti in the Nuremberg war crimes trials, explicitly state that Hitler would exterminate the Jews in Europe, while the Mufti would enlist Nazi aid to exterminate Jews in Palestine, so as to establish a “JudenRein” state of Palestine.

To that end, the Mufti ensconced himself in Hitler’s bunker, from where he recruited an Islamic unit of the Waffen SS, which actively engaged in the mass murder of Jews, while issuing Arabic language appeals on Nazi radio which incited Moslems to join the Nazi cause and to prepare for mass murder of Jews in Palestine.

The Protocols of the Nuremberg conviction of the Mufti were published in the 1946 book, MUFTI OF JERUSALEM, authored by Journalist Maurice Pearlman, who was appointed in 1948 as the first director of the Israel Government Press Office.

Pearlman cited affidavits of senior SS prosecution witnesses who testified that the Mufti, working directly under Eichmann and Himmler, identified the Mufti’s instrumental role in making sure that millions of Jews were murdered, and not ransomed.

No one denies the Mufti’s Arabic language radio broadcasts, his recruitment of the Islamic SS unit, and his active involvement in SS round ups of Jews in Yugosolvia.

And there is no doubt that Mufti was aware of the Final Solution, fully supported it, and sought to extend it to the Arab world

The affidavit of one of Eichmann’s subordinates, SS Hampsturmfuerer Dieter Wisliceny, who appeared as a witness for the Nuremberg prosecution, speaks for itself:

The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry for the Germans and had been the permanent collaborator and advisor of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of the plan…According to my opinion, the Grand Mufti, who had been in Berlin since 1941, played a role in the decision of the German government to exterminate the European Jews, the importance of which must not be disregarded, He had repeatedly suggested to the various authorities with who had been in contact, above all before Hitler, Ribbentrop and Himmler, the extermination of European Jewry. He considered this as a comfortable solution of the Palestinian problem. In his messages broadcast from Berlin, he surpassed us in anti-Jewish attacks. He was one of Eichmann’s best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures…

In 1961, when Eichmann was brought to justice in Jerusalem, Israel’s then foreign minister,, Golda Meir, called for the Mossad to apprehend the Mufti and to sit him alongside Eichmann on trial in Jerusalem

Maurice Pearlman traces the Mufti’s escape to Cairo, where Pearlman reported how the Mufti influenced the newly formed Arab League to spawn the charter of the Arab League, with an explicit statement that its purpose was to wipe out any Zionist entity that would soon come about.

Indeed, the Mufti inspired charter of the Arab League would soon form the basis of the Arab league declaration of war to destroy the nascent state of Israel in 1948.

The refusal of the UK to arrest the Mufti in Cairo, described by Pearlman, caused the head of the Zionist revisionists in the United States at the time, Ben Zion Netanyahu, father of Israel’s current Prime Minister, to launch an unsuccessful campaign to push the US to demand the arrest of the Mufti in Cairo.

A little known fact concerns the Mufti’s special relationship with a young relative in Cairo, who to the Mufti would affectionately give the name “Yassir Arafat”. In December 1996, Haaretz interviewed Yassir Arafat’s younger brother and sister, who said that the Mufti performed the role of a surrogate father figure and mentor to the young Arafat.

The failure of the Arab League, in 1948, to mobilize the Arabs of Palestine into an active war against the newly formed Jewish state led the Mufti to urge the Arab League, in 1964, to launch the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization, whose stated covenant of purpose was almost identical in language to the charter of the Arab League: to exterminate new state of Israel. Yet the focus of the PLO was to organize Arabs who remained in Israel along with the Arab refugees who languished in UNRWA refugee camps to organize an effective grass roots effort to liberate Palestine, all of Palestine, from Jewish rule.

Today, the new curriculum of the Palestinian Authority is imbued with the legacy of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al Husseini, whose vision of a Jew-free Palestine is taught in every educational institution of the Palestinian Authority, together with the armed struggle to liberate Palestine, as an ideal for Palestinian Arab students.

On January 4, 2013, Mahmoud Abbas, spoke glowingly of the legacy of the Godfather of the PLO, the Mufti of Jerusalem, via video link on a wide screen to the masses in Gaza, who gathered to celebrate the founding of Fatah (Arabic word for "conquest"), otherwise known as the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Abbas praised the Mufti as a man whose ways should be emulated by all Palestinian Arabs. "We must remember the pioneers, the Grand Mufti of Palestine, Hajj Muhammad Amin Al-Husseini, as well as Ahmad Al-Shukeiri, the founder of the PLO," Abbas said, according to a translation of the speech made by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

HOLOCAUST WAS THE MURDER OF SIX MILLION JEWS

BY RABBI DR. BERNHARD ROSENBERG

The Holocaust is the systematic mass murder of European Jewry by the Nazis. The term Holocaust literally means a fire that causes total destruction .Yehuda Bauer, one of the world's most eminent historians of the Holocaust, differentiates between the term genocide and Holocaust by defining the term genocide as partial murder .While there have been numerous instances of genocide, the total annihilation of a people was never an officially sanctioned purpose of a national government as it was in Nazi Germany. It is precisely this which differentiates the Nazi action against the Jews from other genocidal attempts against a people.

     The Nazis wished to conquer the world and therefore threatened the very existence of every single Jew in the world. The principle target of the Nazis was always the Jews. Yes, it is true that as many as 50 million human beings were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. The Nazis destroyed the lives of Gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally disabled, Jehovah's Witnesses, communists, socialists, trade unionists

and religious opponents. But it was only the Jews who were singled out for the Final Solution.

      The Jews, according to Hitler were maggots, a virus that had to be eliminated. Hitler saw himself as the German Messiah doing God’s work by destroying the Jew. Let us not forget that all people with three or four Jewish grandparents were sentenced to death. Regarding the Polish population, there were no plans for total annihilation. Slavs were  looked upon as being inferior Aryans; however Slovaks, Croats, and Bulgarians were Slavs who served as German allies, It was only  the Jew that Hitler and the Nazis considered to be like the Devil and therefore inhuman. In the Jew Hitler saw the image of Satan. According to Hitler it was only the Jew who wished to dominate the world, and it was the Jew Hitler wanted to destroy.

      Hitler and the Nazis created a policy of selective mass murder against the homosexuals, Gypsies, Poles, Russians, prisoners of war, Catholic priests, Jehovah's Witnesses', the physically and mentally disabled, dissidents and others. But it was the Jew that was seen as a virus, a bacillus that had to be destroyed before it infected the entire world. It was the Jews who poisoned the mind of mankind. The policy of making the world Judenrein applied to the entire world. The group Hitler hated above all was the Jews. He made himself the supreme racist.

      In his final hours, Hitler continued to urge the destruction of the Jew . Hitler had diverted trains and soldiers to Concentration camps when he desperately needed them for the war effort. Germany was destroyed due to this mad man and at the end all he could think about was murdering more Jews.

      This mad man was responsible for the murder of my grandparents, two siblings, uncles, aunts, and cousins. My father, Jacob, of blessed memory survived Auschwitz and my mother, Rachel of blessed memory survived Skazyskokarmiene. I became a Rabbi to do everything in my power to prevent another Holocaust and to teach the world the lessons of the Holocaust. My fear is that after the death of the final Holocaust survivor and eventually the death of the children of Holocaust survivors, history will be re-written and the Holocaust will no longer be a Jewish issue but rather a universal one. The number will no longer be The 6 million Jews but rather or 50 million casualties of war. Many still persist in saying there were six million Jews and 5 million non- Jews who were exterminated by the Nazis.  We all should mourn and honor those who fought and died, Jew and non-Jew alike. However, let us never forget and always remember that it was the Jews who were the primary target of Hitler and the Nazi regime.  The historian  Yehudah Bauer wrote;' Simon Wiesenthal, as he admitted to me in private,( invented the figure six million Jews and five million non-Jews)  inorder to create sympathy for the Jews- in order to make the non-Jews feel they are part of us.'

     I was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany of Polish parents. I came to America as a refugee. I pray that the Holocaust and the memory of those who perished will be kept alive by our grandchildren and future generations. LET US NOT DILUTE THE MEMORY OF THE HOLOCAUST BY STRESSING HOLOCAUST AND GENOCIDE. WHILE IT IS IMPORTANT TO STRESS THAT WE SHOULD NEVER BE INNOCENT BYSTANDERS WHILE OTHERS ARE MUREREDED OR DISRCRIMINATED AGAINST, WE ALSO SHOULD NEVER DILUTE THE SINGULAR SIGNIFICANCE OF THE HOLOCAUST. I FEAR THAT 50 YEARS FROM NOW THE HOLOCAUST WILL BE FORGOTTEN AND BECOME ONLY A DATE IN HISTORY TOGETHER WITH OTHER GENOCIDES. I WILL DO ALL I CAN NOW TO PREVENT THIS. 

FROM ONE 2 G TO ANOTHER..RABBI DR. BERNHARD ROSENBERG

So many of the Holocaust survivors  in Kansas City who I grew up with have passed away. They were all so important to me and they conveyed a special feeling that no others could. To the second and third generation I offer this comfort before the High Holidays.

I have been an orphan too long. My dad died over 30 years ago, my mother over 20. Recently I discovered that in addition to the death of most of my family in the Holocaust, I also had two half sibling. My story is similar to many of yours. I ask that G-d comfort us today as we remember parents and other love ones. For those who possess holocaust guilt I pray you will listen to me. Most of us were too young to understand the misery experiences by our parents, we could not empathize nor did most of us ask the questions we could have. We simply were afraid of hurting our parents and could not bare seeing them suffer. I have spent a life time trying to find out what I simply could of asked them about our family. I am certain many of you are in the same boat. I beg you, your parents and mine lived for us. They sacrificed everything for us. REMEMBER the good you experienced with them. I will say Yizkor and Kaddish for those of you who can not go to a synagogue. Love your families and your children and grand children. Look at them and have nachas. For those who do not have children or family, please seek friends today and give and receive love. For those who had a different experience, one filled with only joy and good memories, you are very fortunate. For those who experience pain and still do, I pray for you. G-d bless you all and may our loved ones rest in heaven. They already experienced Hell. If you still have holocaust survivors who are alive give them a hug and a kiss. G-d granted me a beautiful wife, 4 children and so far 9 grand children . I only wish my parents were alive to witness this nachas. I am not a psychologist but merely a 2G still struggling. Many of you still have pain because you think you could have done more to help your parents or acted differently towards them. I learned years ago not to generalize 2Gs. It is very dangerous since some become very upset so I will only speak about myself. My personality manifests itself in my always having to be in control of every situation. When my father was dying thirty years ago I thought I could save his life by literally asking him to live for me. My parents sacrificed everything for me. He died and I still have not forgiven myself for not producing a miracle. Regarding my mother, after my father's death I did everything possible for her; she lived with us for many years, but I still feel I could have been more understanding and patient with her. Please forgive yourselves Your parents would not want you in anguish.

have taught Holocaust Studies for most of my life on the high school and college level.  When I discuss the Holocaust and G-d, I share many possible views.  In truth, after having written numerous books on the subject, I don’t have an answer.

I cannot in good conscience believe that the Jewish people were punished, because if I believe that, then I would not be a rabbi, and probably be an atheist. One and a half million priceless Jewish children were murdered.  What was their sin?

Finally, how do we keep Holocaust memory alive and what is our message to our children, grandchildren and future generations?  In my opinion, all the museums in the world and all the books that are written will not preserve the memory of the Holocaust. In time, the Holocaust may become nothing more than a date in history. If we teach Holocaust and genocide together as one subject, we guarantee that the impact of the Holocaust will merely blend into other genocides.

What is the solution?  We must incorporate in our religious services and religious traditions, memoirs, readings, and liturgy, readings concerning the Holocaust.  I have, therefore, already written a Holocaust Passover Haggadah and a Holocaust Siddur ( see on the internet: RosenbergHolocaustHaggadah.com).  Reading about the Holocaust must become part of every Jewish holiday, particularly the High Holidays.

I want to emphasize to those children and grandchildren who still have  living survivors of the Holocaust in their families,  ask questions now, don’t be afraid.  Sometimes, a Holocaust survivor will not feel comfortable speaking to their children, but will be able to communicate their thoughts with their grandchildren.  I ask that you  do so before all the Holocaust survivors are gone.

Remember the lives, the culture, the achievements, of those who perished in the Holocaust.