Halim Malkoč

Halim Malkoč (born August 12, 1917 in Sokolac zu Bihać ; † March 7, 1947 in Bihać) was a Yugoslav Muslim imam and SS-Obersturmführer in the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS "Handschar" . For his participation in the suppression of the mutiny of his battalion in Villefranche-de-Rouergue in 1943, he was probably the first Muslim to receive the Iron Cross during the Second World War .

Life

Bosnian volunteers in the Waffen SS during Islamic prayer (November 1943).

Malkoč was considered a talented military leader due to his service as an officer in the royal Yugoslav army. At the time of the German Wehrmacht attack on Yugoslavia in 1941, he was a young imam in Bosnia . In 1943 he joined the newly formed 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS “Handschar” and was there imam of the SS Mountain Pioneer Battalion 13. In July 1943 he was ordered to Dresden with another Bosnian Ulema for a three-week imam training course organized by SS-Obergruppenführer Gottlob Berger and the “Grand Mufti of Jerusalem ” Mohammed Amin al-Husseini . The participants were trained in the organization of the Waffen-SS and the German language. In addition, the Berlin Opera , Babelsberg Palace , Potsdam and the Nicholaisee were visited.

During the training of his battalion in the French town of Villefranche-de-Rouergue , communist agents provocateurs staged a mutiny on September 17, 1943 , in which several SS officers were killed. Malkoč and the troop doctor Willfried Schweiger convinced the mutineers to give up and disarmed them. For this Malkoč was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd class in October 1943. A year later he was promoted to Imam throughout the division after the initially appointed Imam Abdulah Muhasilović on October 21, 1944 deserted was.

After the war, Halim Malkoč was sentenced to death by hanging by the authorities of communist Yugoslavia for collaborating with the German occupying forces and executed on March 7, 1947 in Bihać .

literature

• Antonio J. Munoz (Ed.): The East Came West: Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist Volunteers in the German Armed Forces . Axis Europa, Bayside (NY) 2001, ISBN 1-891227-39-4 , chapter 2 u. 13.
• Mirko D. Grmek, Louise L. Lambrichs: Les révoltés de Villefranche: mutinerie d'un bataillon de Waffen-ss à Villefranche-De-Rouergue, September 1943 . Seuil, Paris 1998.
• George Lepre: Himmler's Bosnian Division: The Waffen-SS Handschar Division 1943–1945 . Schiffer Military History, Atlgen (PA) 1997, ISBN 0-7643-0134-9 .
• Enver Redžić: Muslimansko Autonomastvo I 13th SS Divizija . Svjetlost, Sarajevo 1987, ISBN 86-01-01124-1 .
• Hermann Neubacher : Special order Southeast 1940-1945. Report from a flying diplomat. 2nd revised edition. Goettingen, 1956.