Mohammed Amin al-Husseini

Mohammed Amin al-Husseini (1929)

Mohammed Amin al-Husseini ( Arabic محمد أمين الحسيني, DMG Muḥammad Amīn al-Ḥusainī or al-Hussaini , English al-Husayni ; * 1895, 1896 or 1897 in Jerusalem ; † July 4, 1974 in Beirut ) was an Islamic Arab nationalist from an influential Jerusalem family. As of the UK inserted Mufti of Jerusalem he became in 1921 the leader of the Palestinians who own nation state aspired. He represented a combination of Islamism , anti-Zionism and conspiracy theoryAnti-Semitism and spread this ideology sustainably among Arabs .

From 1936 to 1939 he led the Arab uprising against Jewish immigrants and the British. From 1937 he worked with the Nazi regime , which he had supported since 1933. From October 1941 until the end of the Second World War he lived in Germany and spread the National Socialist propaganda in the Arab region. He supported the Holocaust and took an active part in it by trying to block escape routes for Jews from Eastern Europe and thus handing thousands of Jewish children over to the Nazi regime. He also became a member of the SS and mobilized Muslims for the Waffen SS in the Balkans.

After the war, al-Husseini was arrested as a war criminal but not charged. In 1946 he found asylum in Egypt , from where he pursued his goals. After the Palestinian War of 1948 and the mass exodus of Palestinians ( Nakba ), he lost his political leadership position. He was a relative, teacher and supporter of Yasser Arafat , who later became the leader of the PLO . Al-Husseini revered them as heroes to this day.

Family and education

Amīn al-Husseini was born in Jerusalem; The year of birth varies between 1895 and 1897. He came from a wealthy Arab family who had competed with the al-Nashashibi clan for large estates and influence in southern Palestine since the 19th century . Members of the al-Husseini clan held leadership positions in Jerusalem from 1850, often providing the mayor and the mufti, who was responsible for protecting the Temple Mount and the holy places of Islam there.

Amin's father, Muḥammad Ṭāhir al-Husseini, as a Mufti of Jerusalem fought against the immigration of Jews to the Ottoman province of Palestine. Since 1891 he wanted to urge Jewish immigrants to emigrate. When the World Zionist Organization was founded in 1897 , he formed a commission to examine and prevent Zionists from buying land in Palestine. In 1899 he applied to the Jerusalem City Council to physically attack and expel Jewish immigrants. This was refused.

Amīn al-Husseini first attended a Koran school, then a secondary Ottoman and Catholic school, where he learned Turkish and French. After a short study visit to the Alliance Israélite Universelle , he began to study Islamic law at the al-Azhar University in Cairo . There he founded an anti-Zionist Palestinian student association. One of his teachers and his mentor until 1935 was Rashīd Ridā , an influential pioneer of reform Islam and pan-Arabism . Al-Husseini dropped out two years later.

In 1913 he made a pilgrimage to Mecca with his mother Zainab and received the honorary title of Hajji . From 1914 he studied administrative sciences in Istanbul at a modernized Ottoman military academy. At the beginning of the First World War he was drafted into the Ottoman Army and assigned to the 47th Brigade in İzmir as an artillery officer. In 1916 he was released from military service due to illness and moved back to Jerusalem.

Politics 1916 to 1933

In the course of the Arab Revolt (1916–1918), the British conquered Jerusalem in 1917. Al-Husseini offered them his services and recruited soldiers for the Sherif's army . However, their leader Thomas Edward Lawrence complained to him about the unreliability of the Palestinians in the army. The future King Faisal I told him that he would never give a Palestinian a high office. At a clan meeting, al-Husseini accused Faisal of being a compliant servant of the British and of working with the Jews. The Arabs would have to drive a wedge between their opponents, otherwise the British would gain control of the Arab world with the help of world Jewry centered in Palestine .

From then on, al-Husseini emerged as an uncompromising opponent of Zionism , which he saw as a long-term threat to an Arab Palestine. According to the Jewish journalist Abbady, he told him at the time that he had nothing against Jews born in Palestine: “But those foreign invaders, the Zionists, we will massacre to the last man. We don't want progress, no prosperity [through Jewish immigration]. The future of this country will be determined by nothing but the sword. ”From 1920 onwards, al-Husseini continuously claimed all of Palestine as an Arab state, refused territorial concessions to Jews and only accepted Jews who had been born in this area up to 1917; he wanted to drive out or destroy all the rest.

At the Pan-Syrian Congress in Damascus in 1919, he supported Faisal as the future king of Syria . That year he joined the Arab nationalist association an-Nādī al-ʿArabī in Jerusalem and became its chairman. He wrote articles for the first newspaper founded in Palestine, Sūriyya al-Ǧanūbiyya ("South Syria"), which appeared in Jerusalem from September 1919 to April 1920. Like them, al-Husseini strove for Greater Syria with Palestine as the southern province and Damascus as the capital. In the Sykes-Picot Agreement of July 1920, however, France received the League of Nations mandate for Syria and Lebanon . The French army occupied Damascus, defeated King Faisal and smashed Greater Syria. Afterwards, al-Husseini turned to Arab nationalism, the focus of which for him was Palestine with Jerusalem.

The Nabi Musa riots from April 4 to 7, 1920 in the old city of Jerusalem were instigated by al-Husseini. The British military administration sentenced him to ten years in prison and replaced his cousin Musa, who was also involved, as mayor of Jerusalem with a member of the rival al-Nashashibi clan. Al-Husseini fled to Syria, but was able to return to Jerusalem in September 1920 and was pardoned.

According to the League of Nations mandate for Palestine , a civilian administration replaced the previous British military administration in 1921. The first British High Commissioner Herbert Samuel overturned the judgment against al-Husseini and, despite his lack of religious training, appointed him Mufti of Jerusalem. He hoped that this would bring about a balance of interests with the Palestinian Arabs and pacify the Husseini clan, whose members had often held office for more than 100 years. Because the Young Turks delegitimized the office of Sheikhul Islam in 1916 and effectively abolished it in 1920, the British wanted to create and control a new political and religious head with the Mufti office. In contrast to the Ottoman tradition, it was not a caliph who chose the Mufti, but the British High Commissioner, a Jew. Al-Husseini was not one of the candidates nominated by the Palestinian muftis. Only the fact that he was the brother of the last mufti, Kamil al-Husseini, was decisive for Samuel.

In 1922, al-Husseini also became president of the Supreme Muslim Council (SMC), which was founded at the time . It was supposed to administer Islamic institutions, foundations and Sharia courts and thus enable Arabs in the region to religious self-government. Because he combined the highest religious and political office, al-Husseini was considered the most influential Arab in Palestine. As the SMC leader, the Mufti continuously propagated the "Al-Aqsa myth" according to which the Jews allegedly planned to take over the entire Temple Mount in Jerusalem with the holy sites of Islam. A picture of a yeshiva on the Temple Mount with a Star of David above it was widely circulated as alleged evidence . With this conspiracy theory , the Mufti wanted to religiously underpin Palestinian nationalism against Jews, internationalize the Palestinian conflict and strengthen his personal prestige among Muslims. In order to draw attention to the alleged endangerment of the Al-Aqsa Mosque by Jews, the SMC sent six delegations to other Middle Eastern countries and as far as India by 1924 . This propaganda was intensified at international Islamic conferences in Jerusalem in 1931 and Bludan in 1937.

Since the fall of 1928, al-Husseini had Jews who wanted to pray at the Jerusalem Western Wall constantly harassed. They were verbally abused and pelted with stones. In August 1929, during Friday prayers , imams claimed that Jews wanted to desecrate the holy places of Islam and build a new temple. Al-Husseini himself preached accordingly in the Dome of the Rock . As a result, Muslims beat Jews at the Western Wall and burned Torah scrolls. The attacks intensified until the Hebron massacre (23 and 24 August 1929). Incited Arabs murdered 67 Jews, expelled almost all of the rest and thus destroyed one of the oldest Jewish communities in the region. Only the British police, who remained passive for a long time, stopped the Jewish pogrom . Before Sir Walter Russell Shaw's commission of inquiry , al-Husseini declared that the British House of Commons was "nothing more than a council of the Elders of Zion". He was playing on the falsified protocols of the Elders of Zion and their anti-Semitic conspiracy theory of "world Jewry".

At that time, al-Husseini received a generous donation from the Nizam of Hyderabad for the restoration of the Al-Aqsa mosque and established close contacts with the Indian Khilafat movement . After the death of its founder Mohammad Ali Jauhar , he offered his brother Shaukat ʿAlī to bury the dead in Jerusalem. Ali and al-Husseini jointly convened the Islamic Congress in 1931 . There, 130 Muslim delegates from 22 countries elected him president. That strengthened his reputation among Muslims around the world. The congress was supposed to organize the resistance against a Jewish nation-state in the mandate of Palestine and its western supporters. The British mandate authorities had set up a purely religious congress, but did little to counter the political aspirations of the organizers.

Arab uprising

→ Main article : Arab uprising

In the 1930s the conflicts between the various Arab parties in Palestine and with the British came to a head. Al-Husseini refused any understanding with the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) and negotiated with the British to stop Jewish immigration. His family claimed the leadership of all Palestinians. The Nashashibis and other clans, on the other hand, sought an independent Palestine through cooperation with the British and the King of Jordan.

In January 1935, al-Husseini, as SMC leader, issued a fatwa that described the whole of Palestine as a “entrusted good” to the Muslims. A conference of Islamic legal scholars ( Ulamā ' ) convened by him in Jerusalem adopted his fatwa and condemned all Muslims who sold or brokered property in “this holy Islamic land” as traitors, unbelievers and apostates . She threatened them with boycott and withdrawal of Muslim funerals, that is, expulsion from the Ummah . The "Central Society for the Promotion of the Good and the Prevention of the Reprehensible", which was then founded, was supposed to monitor the ban on sales and behavior in Palestine that was considered immoral. At the conference, al-Husseini complained about the alleged moral decline of Muslim women and the "softening" of Muslim men. He attributed this to Western art and culture, theater and cinema, which crept into Muslim society like snake venom and destroyed it from within. Behind it are the Jews. In the ensuing uprising, the morality guards appointed by him ordered an anti-modern dress code in Palestine , which was considered Islamic : All male Muslims should wear an Iraqi keffiyeh with a double cord (Iqal) in public spaces , and Muslims should veil themselves. They also collected compulsory donations for the uprising. Arab opponents who refused to obey these regulations were murdered by the Mufti's troops.

In April 1936, after a pogrom against Jews in Nablus , Arab nationalists called a general strike against Jewish immigration. The Arab parties formed a joint Arab High Committee (AHC) to lead the strike and elected al-Husseini as its president, so that he had to position himself publicly. In a passionate speech on May 7, 1936, he called on all Arabs and Muslims worldwide to support the Palestinians in order to prevent a “second Andalusia ” (a tolerant coexistence with the Jews). In order to avoid a direct confrontation with the militarily superior British and a jihad against them, he tried to keep the SMC, which he led, out of the conflict. He did not initially advocate violence against the British, but against Jewish settlers in order to increase the pressure on the British. The more radical nationalists wanted to break off all negotiations with the British. The AHC decided to extend the strike and refuse to pay taxes. After the assassination of the British district commissioner for the Galilee , Lewis Andrews, the British military administration dissolved the AHC and replaced al-Husseini as its chairman. However, he retained his post as Mufti and withdrew to the Temple Mount, avoiding his arrest. This strengthened his standing among the Arabs in Palestine. As their now undisputed leader, he coordinated the ongoing Arab uprising against British mandate rule (1936–1939) and organized attacks on Jews from the Temple Mount.

In 1937, al-Husseini published a 31-page pamphlet Judaism - Islam , which the National Socialists distributed in several languages ​​in the Arab-Islamic region from September 1939 as the “Appeal of the Grand Mufti”. This began the coordinated effort to exploit anti-Semitic passages in the Koran and other Islamic scriptures for anti-Semitic propaganda and to deliberately merge them with the European construct of a Jewish world conspiracy. In it, al-Husseini called on all Muslims not to rest until their countries were free of Jews. He called these “microbes” and “scraps of all countries”.

On January 12, 1937, al-Husseini appeared as the spokesman for all Arabs in Palestine before the Peel Commission , which the British had formed because of the uprising. He again called for a stop of Jewish immigration and the removal of 80 percent (around 400,000) of the Jews who had already immigrated in order to reduce their number to 80,000 as before the First World War. He also called for all land sales to Jews in Palestine to be banned and for the British mandate to be ended. He strictly rejected the Commission's proposal for a two-state solution and instead called for an independent Arab state. He then organized terrorist attacks against moderate Palestinians who preferred an understanding with the British to a Palestinian state under his leadership. This marked the beginning of the second, sacrificial phase of the uprising.

In the 1939 White Paper , the British abandoned the idea of ​​partitioning Palestine, wanted to limit Jewish immigration to 75,000 people by 1944 and to create an independent state of Palestine by 1949, which Jews and Arabs would rule together according to their proportions of the population. Most of the members of the AHC welcomed the White Paper because it met their wishes. However, Al-Husseini made sure that the committee officially rejected the White Paper. Although the British had deposed him as Palestinian leader, he was in close contact with the new "Central Committee of Jihad" in Damascus, which now intensified the Arab uprising.

Partner of the Nazi regime

On March 31, 1933, the day before the National Socialist boycott of Jews , al-Husseini had met Heinrich Wolff , the German consul general in Jerusalem , and offered him support for the Nazi regime . He explained to Wolff in detail that all Muslims around the world “welcomed the Nazi regime and hope that fascist anti-democratic governance will spread to other countries. The current Jewish influence on the economy and politics is harmful everywhere and must be combated ”. The whole Islamic world will enthusiastically join a German appeal for a boycott of Jews; he himself will spread this idea among all Muslims and encourage an active organization to do so. Germany should supply enough industrial products to Palestine so that non-Jews could drive them out there. Al-Husseini and many Arabs called Adolf Hitler with the honorary name Abu Ali ("Father Ali", the caliph ʿAlī ibn Abī Tālib , to whom all Muslims can be traced back).

From 1937 the Nazi regime and fascist Italy granted al-Husseini financial aid. In January 1937, according to The New York Times , he declared : The Arabs and Nazi Germany were jointly fighting Zionism in Palestine. They would have the same enemy, the British and the Jews. Because the Peel Commission's two-state plan emerged, in June 1937 the Nazi regime stopped the emigration of German Jews to Palestine, which had been subsidized until then. Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath instructed the German ambassadors in London, Baghdad and Jerusalem to strengthen “Arabism” as a counterweight to Zionism. A Jewish state would only provide “World Jewry” with an additional power base and is therefore not in the German interest. A circular issued by the Foreign Office confirmed this “revision of the German position”.

In October 1937, the SS officers Adolf Eichmann and Herbert Hagen traveled to Palestine on behalf of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) to examine previous emigration practices and to find allies. Because they could not get a transit visa, they did not meet al-Husseini in person. In their travel report they recommended that only expropriated and few Jews be allowed to emigrate. As “the religious head of the Arabs” and head of the AHC in Damascus, the mufti is the right partner. He directed the "wave of terror" of October 15, 1937 against the British and Jews. They confirmed an "intelligence link between the Security Service " (SD) and him and proposed a network of German and Arab contacts to him that encompassed the entire Middle East. In the same month, al-Husseini fled the British into French-ruled Lebanon .

In Beirut , thanks to the protection of France, which competed with Great Britain for influence in the Middle East, the mufti was able to operate relatively unmolested until 1939. From 1938, Germany also supplied weapons to its troops. At a secret meeting with Wilhelm Canaris , the head of the German Abwehr, the latter abandoned the plan to deliver the weapons via Saudi Arabia so that the British would not discover the source. From 1940 the weapons were brought to Palestine via Lebanon, which was now ruled by the Vichy regime . Without this help, al-Husseini later declared, he would not have been able to carry out the Arab uprising. The Wehrmacht High Command (OKW) confirmed in a report at the time: The revolt in Palestine was only made possible with German funds for the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

In Iraq

After the death of King Faisal I (1933), British-controlled Iraq entered a phase of instability with many coup attempts and political murders. Four anti- British generals in the Iraqi military, known as the Golden Square , formed a center of power against the pro-British government. Three of them had been closely allied with the Mufti since their joint military training. In addition, he had been in contact with the Nazi diplomat Fritz Grobba since 1939 . This brokered arms deliveries from the Nazi regime to the anti-British forces in Iraq in order to promote their uprising against the British.

After the beginning of the Second World War , Great Britain asked France to extradite the Mufti because he was allied with the Nazi regime. France refused. Many Arabs urged him to now publicly take sides with the Allies . He demanded to be allowed to return to Jerusalem, which the British refused. On October 3, 1939, he fled to Baghdad , where he was enthusiastically welcomed by the anti-British population. In consideration of his popularity, the pro-British government of Iraq under King Abd ul-Ilah and Prime Minister Nuri as-Said welcomed him ceremonially. After the bloody Arab uprising, it provided him with a new political stage for his pan-Arab nationalist goals.

From April 1940 he supported the new Prime Minister of Iraq, Rashid Ali al-Gailani, and worked to unite anti-British and pan-Arab forces in Iraq and win them for an alliance with the Axis powers . He founded the “Arab National Party” as a secret organization with the aim of liberating all Arab regions from Western imperialism and then uniting them into one state. He also formed a secret committee of Palestinians and Iraqis who had fled to eliminate pro-British members of the government in Iraq. He arranged meetings between Gailani's government and the German ambassador to Turkey Franz von Papen and the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop . Through these contacts, he presented himself to the Nazi regime as the leader of an Arab elite that authorized him to speak on behalf of all Arabs.

In the summer of 1940 he congratulated Hitler on his victory in the campaign in the west . In September 1940 his private secretary Osman Kemal Haddad traveled to Berlin and suggested to the Nazi regime that the supporters of the Mufti could start an anti-British revolt in Syria, Palestine and Transjordan with captured French weapons. As a condition for this, the Mufti formulated a declaration: “Germany and Italy recognize the illegality of the 'Jewish homeland in Palestine'. They grant Palestine and other Arab countries the right to resolve the problem of the Jewish elements in Palestine and other Arab countries in accordance with the interests of the Arabs and using the same method as the Jewish question is now being settled in the Axis countries. ”The former He was familiar with methods against the Jews in the areas occupied by Germany and its allies: marking, exclusion from the economy, expropriation, forced starvation, ghettoization, concentration in camps and mass murders. So he offered the Nazi regime to extend Hitler's extermination policy to the Middle East.

However, Hitler refused his repeated request that the Nazi regime issue a public guarantee for an independent Arab state in Palestine. Instead, he assured General Philippe Pétain in 1940 that he would do his best to support the Vichy regime in the recovery of "stolen colonies" including Syria and Palestine. In a letter to Hitler on January 20, 1941, the Mufti then described his central status, the suffering of the Arabs among the British and French, and that of the Palestinians among the Jews, whose secret weapons "money, corruption and intrigue" were linked to British military power. Out of consideration for the interests of Italy, Spain and Vichy France, the Nazi regime continued to support only the Arab countries ruled by the British in April 1941. If their populations rose up against the British, Germany wanted to increase its military aid to them.

As early as January 7, 1941, Bernhard von Loßberg emphasized in the OKW that “the Arabs do not need to promise a tolerable solution to the Jewish question in Palestine”, but that “with a clear conscience [...] they can make any concession in this area”. In March 1941 it was agreed that “the main political route to the Arab world should go through the Grand Mufti and his secretary”. A few weeks later, Germany delivered 30,000 carbines, 600 machine guns, 600 machine guns and other weapons to al-Husseini's troops. During the same period, the German and Italian air forces repeatedly bombed Tel Aviv , Jaffa and Haifa . In addition to hundreds of Jews, some Arabs were also killed. Al-Husseini's supporters celebrated the attacks.

Ribbentrop recommended sabotage and intelligence actions in favor of the Axis powers to the Mufti. Thereupon Gailani's people dared the military coup in Iraq in 1941 (April 1st) and cut off the British troops from supplies. On May 2, 1941, the British began a counterattack. On May 15, the German Foreign Office had 24 combat aircraft delivered to the anti-British forces around al-Husseini and Gailani. That wasn't enough for a win.

Al-Husseini's influence on Iraqi politics and its rapprochement with the Axis powers worried the British. Since October 1940 they have been considering kidnapping or murdering him. However, the British Colonial Office and later the Foreign and Commonwealth Office refused, fearing it would increase its popularity with Arabs. After the coup, the British military leadership released some imprisoned Irgun members who were supposed to sabotage Iraq's oil facilities. The commander wanted to kidnap David Raziel al-Husseini. However, he was killed in a German bombing raid on the British air force station in Iraq. The plan was dropped.

The British defeated the putschists in Iraq after a few weeks, also because the Nazi regime only supported the anti-British forces there to a limited extent. Al-Husseini, however, blamed "the Jews". On May 9, 1941, he called on Muslims to engage in jihad against the British and Jews with a fatwa broadcast by Iraqi, German and Italian radio stations. As a result, hundreds of Jews were murdered and their houses and shops destroyed in the Farhud pogrom in Baghdad on June 2, 1941 . A British commission found the main cause of the Farhud in July 1941: Al-Husseini had spread Nazi propaganda with great cunning under the guise of pan-Arabism and the Islamic religion and had influenced leading officials in Iraq's military so strongly that he could give them orders from his place of residence . Al-Husseini fled to Iran, whose new regent Reza Shah Pahlavi guaranteed him political asylum. Japan's embassy in Tehran gave him refuge.

On August 25, 1941, British and Russian troops entered Iran. Al-Husseini escaped the British again and fled via Turkey and the Balkans to Italy and Germany. He advocated a largely “Jew-free” nation-state of the Palestinians vis-à-vis all three Axis powers.

He reached Rome on October 11, 1941 . On October 27, he met Benito Mussolini , who promised him the establishment of a state of Palestine without Jews and emphasized: If the Jews wanted their own state, they should move Tel Aviv to America. There is no place for them in Europe. Al-Husseini agreed with Mussolini that the Arabs would actively support the war against Great Britain; in return, the Axis powers would recognize a fascist Arab state that should include Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Transjordan. Mussolini also promised him the right of the Arabs to deal with the Jews in Palestine as they pleased and to eliminate a Jewish state there. He sent this declaration to the German embassy in Rome. Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano also urged Mussolini to guarantee the Mufti a grant of one million lire. Despite these promises, al-Husseini did not receive the public statement he wanted.

In Nazi Germany

Amin al-Husseini and Adolf Hitler (November 28, 1941)

Amin al Husseini with Heinrich Himmler (1943)

Islamist anti-Semitic propaganda

On November 6, 1941, al-Husseini arrived in Berlin. Over the next few days he spoke with State Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker and Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. On November 28, 1941, Hitler received the Mufti. According to the minutes of the conversation, he said to the " leader admired by the whole Arab world ": "The Arabs are the natural friends of Germany" because they have the same enemies: English, Jews and Communists. They are ready to take part in the war, not only for sabotage and revolts, but also for an Arab legion. Their goal is the independence of Syria, Palestine and Iraq. - Hitler replied that Germany's uncompromising struggle against the Jews naturally includes the struggle against a Jewish home in Palestine, which would only be a state center for the destructive influence of Jewish interests. He let the Mufti know about his war and Holocaust plans: First he would completely destroy the Soviet Union . In the process, the Wehrmacht will reach the southern exit of the Caucasus . Then he will assure the Arab world that the "hour of liberation" has come for them. The German goal would then be “only the annihilation of Jewry living in the Arab region under the protection of British power.” In addition, Hitler remarked that the Mufti's blue eyes and reddish hair are an unmistakable sign of his “ Aryan blood”.

After the meeting, al-Husseini noted in his diary that the Führer was determined to wage war against the Jews and insisted that the Nazis and the Arabs wage the same struggle, namely to exterminate the Jews. The Reich Propaganda Ministry presented the Mufti as the representative of all Palestinians and Arabs. The RSHA made the liaison officer Hans-Joachim Weise available to him as a travel companion and for his personal safety. The Foreign Office gave him Werner Otto von Hentig for this .

Since then, al-Husseini has received 75,000 Reichsmarks a month from the German state for his propaganda activities . From 1943 until the end of the war, according to testimony at the Nuremberg Trial (1946), he received “90,000 marks a month from the coffers of the Foreign Office”. By order of Hitler, he received an "Aryanized" house in Berlin as a "residence" and a large staff. From May 1943 he asked for a “larger Jewish apartment” for his “Grand Mufti's office” and received it. From then on he resided at Goethestrasse 27 in Berlin-Zehlendorf . He used the Wilmersdorf mosque several times for his propaganda speeches. In order to protect him from bomb attacks, his residence was relocated to the health resort Oybin from summer 1944 , where he lived in a stately home as Hitler's personal guest until February 1945.

His radio propaganda was broadcast in the Middle East by the Zeesen shortwave station. 22 public lectures by al-Husseini in Germany have been preserved, including 14 radio speeches. The German war propaganda preserved the interpretative sovereignty and gave him only a few of the approximately 6000 hours of broadcasting time in Arabic. Because of the bombing raids, he was only able to carry out his radio propaganda in full between July 1942 and July 1943. As of November 1943, only three radio speeches by al-Husseini are documented.

However, the Berlin “Office of the Grand Mufti” also had access to the German foreign broadcasters in Athens , Bari , Rome and Tokyo . In addition, al-Husseini called on Muslims around the world to murder Jews. He also organized espionage in the Near and Middle East and promoted the formation of Arab legions and brigades there to fight for Nazi Germany. In 1942 he planned a “German-Arab training department” to train a combat unit for the Wehrmacht. His espionage service spanned the whole of the Middle East. His agents in Palestine, Syria and Iraq provided offices in Turkey, an ally of the Nazi regime, with information that they passed on to German agents. The offices were in cities near the front, such as Mersin , Alexandretta , Adana , Şanlıurfa and Diyarbakır . The Mufti was directly connected to this agent ring via an office in Geneva .

In the summer of 1942, during the German advance on El Alamein , al-Husseini called on all Arabs from Berlin: “Kill the Jews wherever you find them. That pleases God, history and faith. ”On July 7, 1942, his Berlin station“ The Voice of Free Arabism ”broadcast another appeal for genocide : The British would have heavily armed the Jews in Egypt in the event of a British withdrawal. Therefore now applies:

“You must kill the Jews before they open fire on you. Kill the Jews who have usurped your fortune and are planning an attack on your safety. Arabs of Syria, Iraq and Palestine, what are you waiting for? The Jews intend to desecrate your wives, kill your children and destroy you. According to the Muslim religion, defending your life is a duty that can only be fulfilled by exterminating the Jews. This is your best chance to get rid of this filthy race that has robbed you of your rights and brought calamity and destruction to your countries. Kill the Jews, set fire to their property, destroy their businesses, destroy these vile helpers of British imperialism. Your only hope of salvation is to destroy the Jews before they destroy you. "

On December 18, 1942, in the presence of Joseph Goebbels , al-Husseini opened an “Islamic Central Institute” in Berlin with a speech that modeled a fusion of Islamism and anti-Semitism. She described "the Jews" as eternal arch enemies of Allah , his prophet Mohammed and all Muslims condemned in the Koran and as secret rulers over the USA , Great Britain, communism and as the perpetrators of the world war:

“The Jews are among the bitterest enemies of the Muslims, who have shown them enmity from time immemorial and who constantly met them with deceit and cunning. It is well known to every Muslim how the Jews have afflicted him and his faith from the first days of young Islam, and what spite they showed the greatest prophet, how much hardship and sorrow they caused him, how many intrigues they started, how many Conspiracies they brought about against him, that the Koran passed the verdict on them that they were the most implacable enemies of the Muslims [...] The holy Koran and the life story of the Prophet are full of evidence of Jewish lack of character and for their treacherous, lying and deceitful behavior, which is more than enough to warn the Muslims of their ever-acute danger and hostility until the end of the day. And just as the Jews were during the lifetime of the great Prophet, so they have remained at all times, scheming and full of hatred for Muslims whenever the opportunity arises. "

This was shown by the course of the war, in which the English, Americans and “ Bolsheviks ” (Soviet communists) who were (supposedly) ruled by Jews carried the war into the Islamic-Arab world and oppressed the Muslims a million times over. But the war unleashed by world Jewry offers them the best opportunity to free themselves from these persecutions and oppression. In the form of an unconditional command, he finally called for global Islamic resistance against the Jews and allies. Refusing this resistance he equated with apostasy: "The Muslim who still fears another God, or who bows down to his enemies and voluntarily puts his fate in their hands, is no longer a Muslim."

On March 4, 1944, al-Husseini responded to resolutions of the US Congress for a future state of Israel on the Berlin propaganda station with a renewed call for holy war:

"[...] Arabs! Rise up like a man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. That pleases God, history and religion. It is for your honor. God is with you. "

On Muhammad's birthday in the spring of 1944, when the Holocaust was intensifying again, he announced in a radio speech in Berlin to Muslims worldwide: “Whenever Jewish bacilli are found, there are also remedies against this disease that attacks the world and that everywhere Arab and Islamic beings threatened. [...] Go forward with determination and strength to expel all Jews from Palestine and the other Arab and Islamic countries. "He is convinced that Allah will" disappoint these ambitious people "and help the Axis powers to win. Then there will be an independent Arabia "in which there will be no more trace of the Jews and their allies". On December 17, 1944, he affirmed the goal of a purely Arab Grand Palestine: "We want [...] an independence that does not allow foreigners access and leaves no place for Jews, in which the entire Arab fatherland is available for its Arab people alone."

The synthesis of Islam and National Socialism served the Mufti until 1945 to recruit Muslims for the SS , their ideological indoctrination and military training. He specifically used religious rhetoric, terminology and iconography to manipulate Muslims for his own political and military purposes. German radio propaganda also linked Islam with anti-Jewish agitation to an extent previously unknown in the Muslim world. Until the end of the war, the Mufti worked with the Reich Propaganda Ministry. After a meeting with him in 1944, Goebbels noted in his diary: “He explains to me that the Arab-Muslim population never had any conflicting interests with the German Reich, or has today or will have in the future. As a result, the 400 million Muslim-Arab population can absolutely be won over to us, if only they are properly dealt with propagandistically. "

Participation in the war of extermination

Al-Husseini (center) with Karl-Gustav Sauberzweig (left), division commander of the "Handschar", as Bosnian-Muslim volunteers of the Waffen-SS walk off (November 1943)

In 1943 the SS decided to set up a Muslim SS division. From March 1943 she sent the Mufti on an extensive, carefully staged propaganda tour through the entire Balkans , beginning with Croatia, which was ruled by the fascist Ustaša . It was supposed to give religious legitimacy to the desired German-Islamic alliance, to recruit Muslims and to negotiate with local Muslim leaders. The Nazi regime assumed its worldwide religious authority over Muslims, which it had repeatedly asserted. Since 1931 he used the contacts he had made with Islamic dignitaries in Southeast Europe. In 1942 a newspaper in Sarajevo had presented him as the protector and champion of oppressed Muslims. He had expressed Hitler's sympathy for Islam and claimed that Muslims around the world were on the side of the Axis powers. Germany will not oppress a Muslim country, but instead bring down Great Britain and Islamophobic Russia with the help of Muslims. Islam is the natural enemy of communism. The Axis victory will also be a victory for the Islamic peoples.

From then on, al-Husseini dealt with the organization and training of Bosniaks for Islamic units of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS . To do this, he called on Muslim recruits to jihad. He had to train the imams of these SS troops, who were responsible for the ideological formation of the fighters. To this end, he had been planning an “Imam Institute” with the SS leadership since May 1943 and agreed guidelines with them that defined the relationship between National Socialism and Islam and the spheres of interest on both sides. The largest Muslim SS troop was the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS "Handschar" (Croatian No. 1) (after " Handschar "; 21,065 men). From February 1944 she carried out massacres of Serb civilians and partisans in the Balkans, for example in Bosnia-Herzegovina . In 1943 she had already murdered in France. Parts of the troops turned against the SS and split off. Survivors of the uprising had fled to the Maquis . The 23rd Waffen Mountain Division of the SS "Kama" (3793 men) was disbanded after five months; their relatives were distributed to other units. Further units were a Muslim SS self-defense regiment in the Sanjak , an “Arab Freedom Corps”, an “Arab Brigade”, the Free Arabia Legion and an “East Turkish Arms Association” of the SS. Heinrich Himmler , the SS Reichsführer , appointed al-Husseini as SS -Group leader .

The Nazi ideologist Gerhard von Mende wanted to appoint al-Husseini in 1943 as the religious head of those Muslim Crimean Tatars who helped the Wehrmacht in the fight against partisans and in the extermination of the Jews.

From May to October 1943, al-Husseini constantly urged the Nazi regime to bomb Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, especially the headquarters of the Jewish Agency . He suggested to the Air Force High Command to “celebrate” the 26th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration (November 2, 1943) with such bombs. The Air Force considered attacks on military targets in the coastal region of Palestine and stated that these would "even be sufficient for the Grand Mufti [...]". Undoubtedly, Tel Aviv should also be considered as a target for counter-attacks on Allied “terrorist attacks”. These would have to be carried out with great power in order to have a lasting effect. On July 17, 1943, Hermann Göring had to reject the plan because there was not a large enough air force squadron available. On November 2, 1943, the Nazi regime publicly promised the Mufti that the “destruction of the so-called Jewish homeland in Palestine” would be and remain “an integral part of the policy of the Greater German Reich”. He then demanded that Tel Aviv be bombed on April 1, 1944; again the air force had to reject his request. According to Nazi documents, the mass extermination of Jews in Palestine did not take place because of the war situation.

Participation in the Holocaust

When al-Husseini met Hitler in November 1941, the Holocaust was in full swing. The Einsatzgruppen had murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews since the German attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Hitler had decided on the Europe-wide “ Final Solution to the Jewish Question ” between October and December 1941 and shortly after the meeting with the Mufti, invited to the Wannsee Conference , where the “Final Solution” was organized. Shortly after the conference in January 1942, al-Husseini met Heinrich Himmler, head of the RSHA, and Adolf Eichmann for the first time. According to Dieter Wisliceny , a " Jewish advisor " from the Eichmann department , Eichmann showed the Mufti statistics on the proportion of Jews in the population in various European countries and gave him a detailed lecture on the "solution to the European Jewish question". Al-Husseini reported to Eichmann about Himmler's promise to send a “Jewish representative” with him to Jerusalem as a personal advisor after the victory of the Axis powers. At Eichmann's request, however, he, Wisliceny, refused this order. The Mufti made a big impression on Eichmann and Himmler and, according to his statement, met Eichmann several times up to 1944. In 1942 he also had a conversation with Friedrich Suhr , department head in the Eichmann department, and sent his staff to a training conference of the SD.

On June 26, 1942, SS Major General Erwin Ettel spoke to al-Husseini and noted that he had told him: “Germany is the only country in the world that does not limit itself to fighting the Jews in its own country, but rather that uncompromisingly declared war on world Jewry. In Germany's struggle against world Jewry, the Arabs felt very closely connected to Germany. "

Only days later, the German troops were on the African campaign in front of El Alamein. Analogous to the Einsatzgruppen in Eastern Europe, the Einsatzgruppe Egypt under Walter Rauff , the inventor of the gas vans , was supposed to murder the Jews in the British Mandate Palestine. On July 13, 1942, Rauff received an operational guideline from Erwin Rommel's staff that allowed mass murders of the civilian population. Al-Husseini's liaison officer to the RSHA was one of the perpetrators commissioned to do so. Rauff's task force had been ready for departure in Athens since July 22, 1942. Al-Husseini wanted to support the German advance with Arabs from Palestine. For this purpose, he offered the Africa Corps through his liaison officer the "formation of band-like Arab forces and their equipment", "which are marched into Egypt and the other Arab countries in order to destroy the enemy by destroying roads, bridges and any means of communication. disrupt and develop uprisings in the interior of the country. ”From July 1942, Arabs with lime signs on the walls of Jewish houses in Palestine asserted ownership claims because they expected the deportation of the Jews after the German invasion. The Jews in Palestine knew of Hitler's promise to the Mufti to deport them to the extermination camps. Some left the region, others got themselves cyanide capsules to a German invasion suicide to commit.

In the summer of 1942, al-Husseini managed to allow his employees to visit the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . According to Fritz Grobba’s report of July 17, 1942, the Jews interned there particularly aroused the “interest of the Arabs”. With them, the inspection "without a doubt [...] left a very favorable impression".

In 1941 the Nazi regime had legally forbidden Jews to leave the German Reich. From 1943 onwards, the International Red Cross tried to get Jewish children out of the German sphere of influence and asked the Foreign Office to be safe for shipments to Palestine. In May 1943, Himmler and Eichmann decreed: "The emigration of Jewish children must be refused in principle." Only once did Eichmann want to exchange 5,000 Jewish children for 20,000 Germans captured abroad at short notice. However, Dieter Wisliceny had to break off the ongoing negotiation on Eichmann's orders because al-Husseini had intervened. Wisliceny testified to Eichmann's reasoning in 1946: The Mufti learned of the plan through his intelligence service in Palestine and then “protested strongly” to Himmler because these children would soon grow up and strengthen the “Jewish element” in Palestine. Thereupon Himmler strictly forbade the action and any departure of Jews from areas controlled by Germany. The Jewish architect Endre Steiner, with whom Wisliceny had negotiated in 1943, testified that Wisliceny had explained to him: Since the Mufti worked closely with Eichmann, no German authority could accept the destination of Palestine in order not to be exposed in front of the Mufti. Wisliceny confirmed this testimony. The 5,000 children were later brought from the Theresienstadt concentration camp to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and murdered in the gas chambers there.

In 1943, some states allied with Germany wanted to allow Jewish children to be transported to Palestine. When al-Husseini found out about this, he wrote to Bulgaria's foreign minister on May 6, 1943 :

“Once the Jews had emigrated, they could come into contact unhindered with their racial comrades from the rest of the world and do more damage to the deserted country than before. […] In addition, the Jews were getting closer to their goal of 'establishing a Jewish nation state' […]. I would like to allow myself to draw your attention to the fact that it would be very appropriate and expedient to prevent the Jews from emigrating from your country and to send them to where they are under strong control, for example to Poland . This avoids their danger and does a good, grateful deed towards the Arab people ... "

The letter proves that al-Husseini knew about the camps in Poland and possibly alluded to the extermination of the Jews there in the usual Nazi camouflage language.

On May 13, 1943, al-Husseini wrote to German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop:

“The friendly Arab people, through the community of interests, have placed themselves on the side of the Axis Powers without any hesitation in this struggle against communism and the Anglo-Saxons and expects their friends [...] to solve the world Jewish problem by placing the Jews under strong control and thus evade their danger and harm. The emigration of Jews from the countries they have previously inhabited, and their concentration in the Middle East, will allow them to freely connect with the rest of the world, taking advantage of their military knowledge and their existing well-camouflaged organizations [...] step, and thus become much more harmful and dangerous than before. I would therefore like to ask Your Excellency to do the utmost to let Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary refrain from carrying out this actually Jewish-Anglo-American plan. "

On June 10, 1943, al-Husseini sent a letter to Italy's foreign minister, Galeazzo Ciano , to prevent Jews from leaving Eastern Europe, including Romania , from leaving for Palestine. On June 28, 1943, he requested the foreign ministers of Romania and Hungary in analogous letters to deport the Jews there to Poland instead of letting them emigrate to Palestine. So he repeatedly urged both the Nazi regime and its allies for the genocide of the Jews to be strictly enforced.

On July 4, 1943, al-Husseini met Heinrich Himmler in Zhitomir (Ukraine). His memoirs (published in 1999) and Himmler's service calendar are evidence of the meeting. Himmler's field headquarters during the Russian War was in Zhitomir. The previous year the Jews in the area had been exterminated. On the way there, the Mufti visited several places occupied by Germans along his route in May 1943, including probably extermination camps in Auschwitz, Treblinka and / or Majdanek . In Zhitomir he visited one of the 27 SS settlements with which Alfred Rosenberg wanted to Germanize large parts of Russia. During this visit, Himmler told the Mufti, according to his memoir: "We have so far destroyed about three million of them [the Jews]." Al-Husseini claimed that he first learned that the Germans had by then more than three million Jews " Exterminated " (Arabic abadna ): "I was amazed at the number because I hadn't known anything about the matter until then." Himmler asked him how he intended to solve the Jewish question in his country. He replied: "All we want is to see them return to their countries of origin." Himmler replied: "We will never allow them to return to Germany."

On November 12, 1943, al-Husseini emphasized in his speech on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration: The Germans know how to get rid of the Jews. So far, they have never harmed Muslims and have once again fought their common enemy. Above all, they would definitely have solved the Jewish problem. All of this, especially the latter, makes “our friendship with Germany not temporary and dependent on conditions, but permanent, based on common interests”. From this, historians derive precise knowledge of the Mufti from the Holocaust and his intention to continue it in his own sphere of rule.

On June 4, 1944, the negotiator Rudolf Kasztner negotiated with Eichmann about the departure of 1,685 Jewish children from Hungary in exchange for a large bribe. Eichmann, according to Kasztner in 1946, had refused her departure to Palestine because he was personally friends with the Mufti and had promised him not to allow European Jews to travel there any more. Dieter Wisliceny confirmed Eichmann's statement a few days later. Wisliceny had also informed him that the Mufti had played a not insignificant role in the German decision to exterminate the Jews, and that Eichmann had constantly encouraged him to accelerate the extermination. Kasztner's statements largely agree with those of Wisliceny. According to Kasztner, Wisliceny also informed him in June 1944 that the mufti had also visited the gas chambers and crematoria of the Auschwitz concentration camp the previous year . In 1947, Simon Wiesenthal documented contacts between the Mufti and Nazi perpetrators and camp commanders Rudolf Höß , Franz Ziereis , Siegfried Seidl and Josef Kramer .

On June 28, 1944, the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories under Alfred Rosenberg al-Husseini and other Arabs invited a planned “anti-Jewish congress” in Krakow , which was supposed to win over other states for the extermination of the Jews. The congress was finally canceled a month later.

In a radio broadcast on September 21, 1944, al-Husseini spoke of "no more than eleven million Jews in the world". Back then, the number was dismissed as a slip of the tongue or a mistake in the manuscript. But he knew that around 17 million Jews were living around the world at the beginning of the war. Some historians deduce from this that in the autumn of 1944 he was exactly informed about the extent of the extermination of the Jews, probably through his contacts with Himmler and Eichmann.

post war period

In 1945 Great Britain was looking for al-Husseini as a collaborator with the Nazi regime, Yugoslavia was looking for him as a war criminal. On May 7, 1945, he and two of his employees tried to enter Switzerland illegally with a Siebel Si 204 . On Belp he was arrested and handed over to French authorities on 8 May 1945th

In France, the former High Commissioner of the Levant took Henri Ponsot al-Husseini into his home and advocated his early release. Great Britain and Yugoslavia demanded that he be extradited to them as a war criminal. By September 1945, however, the French government decided to transfer him to an Arab country because he was not a war criminal but a political prisoner. Internally, the government admitted that he was considered a war criminal and that the British claim was justified. But they wanted to bring him to Cairo in order to strengthen France's zones of influence in the Levant and North Africa with him. Because Cairo had become the preferred refuge for anti-French Arab nationalists supported by the British secret service. The Arab League then led through out campaigns against France's colonial rule in North Africa from Cairo. At the same time, British agents urged Arab leaders to demand al-Husseini's release, and British Arab media accused France of ill-treating him. By June 1946, the French secret service arranged his escape to the Kingdom of Egypt . His government under King Faruq had planned the fictitious escape and welcomed him. In order to damage the British influence in the Middle East as much as possible, the date of escape was set for May 29, 1946, on which a pan-Arab conference began in Bludan.

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood had supported the Arab uprising in Palestine since March 1935 with propaganda and financial means, demonstrations and volunteer fighters. Immediately after the end of the war, she contacted al-Husseini in order to reorganize the resistance against Zionism and sent military advisers to Palestine. After al-Husseini's arrival in Cairo, she successfully urged the Egyptian government to guarantee him asylum. Their leader Hassan al-Banna received him with an eulogy: “The Mufti is worth as much as a whole nation. The mufti is Palestine and Palestine is the mufti. O amine! What a great, indomitable, great man you are! Hitler and Mussolini's defeat did not frighten you. What a hero, what a wonder of man. We want to know what the Arab youth, cabinet ministers, rich people and the princes of Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Tunisia, Morocco and Tripoli will do to be worthy of this hero, yes, this hero who, with the help of Hitler and Germany, will be doing Empire challenged and fought against Zionism. Germany and Hitler are no more, but Amin al-Husseini will continue the fight. "

In order not to endanger the desired withdrawal of British troops, the Egyptian government did not announce al-Husseini's arrival until June 20, 1946. In order not to increase tensions with Holocaust survivors who wanted to travel to Palestine, Great Britain forbade him to return there. This made it difficult to set up a Palestinian force under his command. Nevertheless, he ran this with his last Nazi salary and donations from Arab states. He became chairman of the AHC again. Thereupon the UN appointed him to the representative of all Arabs in Palestine against the protest of the Jewish Agency , which unsuccessfully referred to his Nazi collaboration.

Al-Husseini received many German National Socialists in Cairo and helped them to go into hiding in Arab states and to work there as a military advisor to anti-Israeli troops. He helped the Hitler biographer and close Goebbels employee Johann von Leers to convert to Islam and to a post in the Egyptian Ministry of Information. There, Leers arranged for a new Arabic translation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and significantly influenced Egypt's anti-Jewish measures. Al-Husseini committed his followers to anti-communism , as the US Central Intelligence Agency noted at the time.

By April 1946, the Anglo-American committee set up for this purpose investigated the situation of hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors who were imprisoned as displaced persons in European camps under extremely difficult circumstances , and also heard representatives of the Arabs. They unanimously praised the wanted war criminal al-Husseini as their only leader, strictly refused to accept any further Jews in Palestine and threatened them and the British with violence. In contrast, Richard Crossman, as a representative of Great Britain, referred to the Mufti's SS membership and his participation in the German war of annihilation. In May 1947 the UN set up the UNSCOP committee , which consulted all relevant organizations on the Palestinian problem. The AHC rejected the committee and all discussions with it because the “natural rights” of the Arabs in Palestine were “self-evident” and, according to the Charter of the United Nations, should not be investigated, but should be recognized. This stance contributed indirectly to the success of the UN partition plan for Palestine .

On November 27, 1947, two days before the UN's decision to partition, al-Husseini sought contact with the Jewish Agency once and suggested that it hold secret talks without the intermediary of Arab countries. David Ben-Gurion replied that they were ready to negotiate with all Arab leaders except the Mufti. Without publicly admitting it, some Arab leaders were willing to compromise, including the Nashashibi clan and its allies in Hebron , Nablus and Nazareth . Thereupon the Husseini clan had several of these opponents murdered in the style of the Mafia . As the AHC leader, the Mufti ensured that the Arab states uncompromisingly rejected the UN partition plan. Palestinians who wanted to negotiate with Jews and the UN could not prevail against him. He had many murdered, including his cousin Fawzi Darwish Husseini.

After the UN partition resolution, the Mufti led a force of Muslim Brotherhood to fight against Jewish Zionists in Palestine. He helped hundreds of German prisoners of war to escape from British camps and united his troops with them, as well as more than 900 Muslim Bosnians who had already fought in his SS Handschar division , with Islamist private troops from Egyptian landowners, supporters of General Francisco Franco and fighters from the Ustasha of Croatia . They carried out raids and terrorist attacks on Jewish villages. In January 1948, Golda Meir , who was then head of the Jewish Agency, declared: "The Jews in Palestine will never hoist the white flag in front of the Mufti of Jerusalem."

In March 1948, the United States Department of State surprisingly proposed a temporary UN administration of Palestine to stop the division decided by the UN, and imposed an arms embargo on Zionists. Most US citizens rejected the proposal as "surrender to Arab violence". On July 16, 1948, the Mansfield News Journal reported on the evidence presented at the Nuremberg Trials that the Mufti ("that typical representative of an unspeakable rag") received a high Nazi salary and successfully prevented the rescue of Jewish children from Romania from the Nazis would have. The paper blamed Middle East Representative Loy W. Henderson and other US diplomats for hiding the Mufti's Nazi past and for supporting him. Unlike other Palestinian leaders, he also strictly rejected the UN trusteeship administration of Palestine and announced that the armed struggle against the Jews in Palestine would continue to the last man until the UN would finally withdraw the partition plan. In the Palestinian War , which six Arab states began immediately after the founding of Israel (May 14, 1948), the German prisoners of war freed by the Mufti fought in the “German Aid Committee for the Middle East” with Spanish and Croatian fascists on the side of the Arabs. After the conquest of East Jerusalem (mid-May 1948), the Arab Liberation Army under Fausi al-Kawukdschi , whom the Mufti had brought to Germany in 1941 and whom the SS had trained there, destroyed the famous Hurva synagogue .

On September 22, 1948, al-Husseini founded an “Arab government for all of Palestine” as the head of the AHC. It was recognized by Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Yemen , but remained limited to the Gaza Strip occupied by Egypt . Jordan occupied the West Bank with East Jerusalem in the Palestinian War . His king Abdallah ibn Husain I convened a congress in Jericho in December 1948 , where a majority of Arab and Muslim leaders voted for the connection of the West Bank to Jordan. Because Jordan now administered the holy places of Islam in East Jerusalem, Abdallah appointed a new Mufti for Jerusalem. Nevertheless, in March 1949 the UN approved al-Husseini as the official representative of the Palestinians in the UN-Palestine Conference. The postwar government of Iraq rejected an Arab leadership role by al-Husseini, because he had carried out the 1941 coup against the Hashemites . Jordan annexed the West Bank by 1950, while Egypt retained the Gaza Strip. Both states had no interest in an independent Greater Palestine ruled by the ex-Mufti and preferred an armistice with Israel and thus its toleration.

As a result of the war, al-Husseini did not control any part of Palestine. One reason for this was that he viewed the war as a religious jihad and was therefore unable to sign a document granting unbelieving Jews any part of Palestine. Moderate Palestinians judged that since 1939, when the Mufti rejected the British White Paper, this rigid stance of refusal had contributed to the establishment of Israel, the loss of large parts of Palestine to Israel and the flight and expulsion of many Palestinians ( Nakba ). Although al-Husseini was unable to do anything against the Jordanian and Israeli military, he probably arranged, in revenge, the murder of King Abdallah on July 20, 1951, when he was attending the Friday prayer in Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque.

Mohammed Amin al-Husseini in conversation with Zhou Enlai at the Bandung Conference in 1955

Despite his loss of office and power, al-Husseini headed the Islamic World Congress from 1951 to 1962 . At its annual conference in Karachi ( Pakistan ) in 1951 , he threatened India with war over Kashmir and Israel war over Palestine. In 1959, Egypt dissolved the “Arab Government for All Palestine”.

Rainer Bieling sums up the post-war activities of the Mufti as follows:

"Infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood with National Socialist ideas and cooperation with their fighters in preventing a Jewish state, inciting the Arab population in the British Mandate and inciting the Arab attack on Israel in 1948 were the work of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and his Muslim National Socialists."

In response to allegations by some Arabs that his partisanship for Hitler and Mussolini had damaged the Arab cause, al-Husseini defended himself in 1969: Germany had not violated a single Arab or Islamic state. “I was and remain convinced that if Germany and Italy had been victorious, then no remnant of Zionism would have remained in Palestine or the Arab states.” This is understood as adhering to the goal of exterminating the Jews. Until the end of his life, the mufti regretted Hitler's defeat and hoped to turn it around.

Al-Husseini died in 1974 in the hospital of the American University of Beirut . According to Jordanian and Lebanese press reports, the Jerusalem Waqf asked the Israeli government to bury him in Jerusalem, but the government refused. This is how he was buried in Beirut. Forty days after his death, a memorial service was held at the Islamic Faculty of the University of Jordan , at which King Hussein was represented by Prime Minister Zaid Al-Rifai .

reception

Palestine

Al-Husseini was the role model and mentor of Yasser Arafat , the later PLO leader. In order to strengthen his reputation and his claim to leadership, Arafat always claimed that he, like the Mufti, came from the Husseini clan and, like them, was born in Jerusalem. Since 1946, al-Husseini encouraged Arafat, who was studying in Cairo, to seek political leadership among the Palestinians. A German Nazi officer who had accompanied the Mufti to Egypt gave Arafat secret lessons. Under this influence, Arafat participated in 1948 with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the Palestine war against Israel. Al-Husseini brought Arafat into contact with the King of Saudi Arabia and, like Arafat , helped finance Fatah, which was founded in 1958 . The Palestinian National Charter of the PLO, founded in 1964, adopted al-Husseini's goals. When he died in 1974, Arafat walked right behind his coffin at his funeral in Beirut, leading the funeral procession of thousands of Palestinians. The PLO representative in Beirut confessed to al-Husseini in an emphatic, religiously charged funeral speech, as did the secular Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) a few days later .

Arafat called the Mufti "our hero" in an interview in 2002, whom the Western powers "regarded as an ally of the Nazis" and had tried in vain to get rid of. The Mufti fought against Israel in 1948, “and I was one of his soldiers”. In accordance with this self-image, Arafat retained the goal of a Jew-free entire Palestine.

Arafat's representative in Germany Abdallah Frangi denied al-Husseini's collaboration with the Nazi regime and claimed in his book “PLO and Palestine. Past and Present "(1982) contrary to the facts, the Germans" completely ignored "the Mufti during his time in Berlin. In a 2001 interview, Frangi called for the NATO states, including Germany, to be deployed against Israel, analogous to the 1998/1999 war in Kosovo . The Palestinian textbook of the NGO publisher Tamer "The Modern History of Palestine" praised al-Husseini in 2008 as the leader of "our patriotic movement" supported by the "members of our leading educated families". The PLO leader Mahmud Abbas praised al-Husseini in 2013 on the anniversary of the founding of Fatah as “our pioneer”.

On January 4, 2013, the 48th anniversary of Fatah's first attacks on Israelis in the Gaza Strip (1965), Abbas praised numerous Islamist assassins as "martyrs and heroes" and preceded them with the Mufti as "pioneers". On July 4, 2019 reminded Mahmoud Al-Habbash, a Sharia -Richter and advisor to Abbas for the Palestinian Authority , to al-Husseini's death and praised the Mufti as a "role model" ( role model ) of the Palestinians.

Israel

In Israel's view of history, the meeting of the Mufti with Hitler in 1941 mostly symbolized the cooperation of large parts of the Arab world with the National Socialists with the aim of exterminating the Jews. In the Eichmann trial of 1961, several witnesses confirmed Dieter Wisliceny's statements from 1946 on Eichmann's collaboration with al-Husseini: "The Mufti is a relentless arch enemy of the Jews and has always been the champion of the idea of ​​the extermination of the Jews." Further testimony that al-Husseini was also an initiator of the Holocaust and constant advisor to Himmler and Eichmann in its execution are considered oversubscribed. Wisliceny did not claim this initiative. He got no benefit from incriminating the mufti; he was executed as a Nazi criminal in 1948. Eichmann himself denied his friendship and collaboration with the Mufti in 1961. He only met him once when the security service introduced him to the top RSHA officials (all of whom were Holocaust perpetrators). Here, too, al-Husseini may have learned about the Holocaust. The latter claimed that he had never met Eichmann and had nothing to do with the Holocaust.

Some Israeli politicians refused to come to an understanding with the Palestinians because of the Mufti's collaboration with the Nazi regime. Benjamin Netanyahu, for example, declared al-Husseini at a Knesset memorial on January 27, 2012 as one of “the leading architects of the 'Final Solution'”, who “had an impact on Hitler” in Berlin. Netanyahu described the 2012 Jerusalem Mufti as a direct follower of this policy.

research

Historians and political scientists such as Abraham Ashkenasi , Martin Cüppers , Klaus Gensicke, Jeffrey Herf , Klaus-Michael Mallmann , David Patterson, Richard Lowell Rubenstein , Barry Rubin, Wolfgang G. Schwanitz , Tilman Tarach and others have the Mufti's knowledge of the Nazi extermination and his active participation in it is evidenced by numerous documents known since 1945 and later discovered. The extent of this involvement and the role of the Mufti in planning the Holocaust are controversial.

David G. Dalin and John F. Rothmann emphasize that by building up the Bosnian Waffen-SS and repeatedly intervening against the flight of European Jews to Palestine, he played a key role in the Holocaust and helped plan the extermination of the Jews of Palestine. The task force in Egypt under Walter Rauff had been set up in consultation with him.

According to Bernard Lewis , the Nazis did not need additional encouragement from the Mufti for their extermination policy. According to Idith Zertak, the prosecutor in the Eichmann trial, Gideon Hausner, exaggerated the role of the mufti in the Nazi crimes for political reasons but without evidence, thereby inadvertently reducing the responsibility of the real perpetrators. The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust presents al-Husseini's biography in more detail than that of Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich put together. Bettina Stangneth sees Wisliceny's testimony from 1946 more as a strategy of self-exoneration. David Motadel sees only a limited influence of the Mufti in Berlin. His plan to achieve concrete concessions and guarantees for Arab and Palestinian independence has failed. He was only successful with proposals that corresponded to German interests, such as preventing Jewish emigration from Southeastern Europe to Palestine. His attitude should be seen as part of a broader German policy towards the Islamic world. He had served the Germans as a propaganda figure when the circumstances required it.

Zvi Elpeleg finds it impossible to estimate the consequences of al-Husseini's efforts to prevent the escape of Jews from German-occupied countries. However, he undoubtedly hated the Jews themselves, not just Zionism. He knew about the extermination that awaited the Jews, whose departure he prevented, and was very happy about the National Socialist “final solution”.

Dalin and Rothmann draw a line of tradition from the ideology of the mufti to the Islamist terrorism of the 21st century. He therefore inspired Islamist terror groups such as Hamas , Hezbollah , Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda . His ideology founded the radical Islamic anti-Semitism of the 20th and 21st centuries. The fatwa, which he read out on German radio in 1943, had inspired generations of terrorists from Arafat to Osama bin Laden to Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh. The Mufti has thus become the link between the old anti-Semitism and the new hatred of Jews and Holocaust denial in the Muslim world.

Additional information

Texts of al-Husseini

• Zvi Elpeleg (Ed.), Rachel Kessel (Translator): Through the Eyes of the Mufti: The Essays of Haj Amin, Translated and Annotated. Vallentine Mitchell, London / Portland 2009, ISBN 0853039704
• Gerhard Höpp (Ed.): Mufti Papers. Letters, memoranda, speeches and appeals by Amin al-Husaini from exile 1940–1945. Schwarz (Schiler), Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-87997-180-3 .
• Abd al-Karim Umar (Ed.): Muzakkirat al-Hagg Muhammad Amin al-Husaini. Damascus 1999 (Memoirs, Arabic).

literature

Biographical

• Edy Cohen: Hebrew המופתי והיהודים: מעורבותו של חאג 'אמין אלחוסיני בשואה ומלחמתו נגד יהודי ארצות ערב, 1946-1935("The Mufti and the Jews - The Involvement of Haj Amin el-Husseini in the Holocaust and his War on the Jews of the Arab Countries 1935-1946"). Ariel Research Center for Defense and Communications, Tel Aviv 2021, ISBN 978-965-92786-8-8 (Hebrew).
• Klaus Gensicke: The Mufti of Jerusalem and the National Socialists. A political biography of Amin el-Husseini. (1988) Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2012, ISBN 3-534-24802-3 .
• David G. Dalin, John F. Rothmann: Icon of Evil. Hitler's Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam. Random House, 2008, ISBN 1-4000-6653-0 .
• Jennie Lebel: The Mufti of Jerusalem Haj-Amin El-Husseini and National-Socialism. Čigoja štampa, Belgrade 2007, ISBN 86-7558-531-4 .
• Rainer Zimmer-Winkel (ed.): Hadj Amin al-Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem. A controversial figure. Kulturverein Aphorisma, Trier 1999, ISBN 3-932528-45-X .
• Zvi Elpeleg : The Grand Mufti. Haj Amin al-Hussaini, Founder of the Palestinian National Movement. (1988) Frank Cass, London 1993, ISBN 0-7146-4100-6 .
• Philip Mattar: The Mufti of Jerusalem. Al-Hajj Aminal-Husayni and the Palestinian National Movement. Columbia University Press, New York 1988, ISBN 0-231-06463-2 .
• Taysīr Jabārah: Palestinian Leader Hajj Amin Al-Husayni: Mufti of Jerusalem. Kingston Press, 1985, ISBN 0-940670-10-0
• Anthony R. De Luca: 'The Grand Mufti' in Berlin: The Politics of Collaboration. In: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Volume 10, No. 1/1979, DOI: 10.2307 / 162482, pp. 125-138
• Joseph B. Schechtman: The Mufti and the Fuehrer. The rise and fall of Haj Amin el-Husseini. T. Yoseloff, New York 1965

Contemporary history environment

• David Motadel : For prophets and leaders. The Islamic World and the Third Reich. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 3-608-98105-5 .
• David Motadel: Islam and Nazi Germany's War. Harvard University Press, London 2014, ISBN 0-674-72460-7 .
• Barry Rubin, Wolfgang G. Schwanitz : Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East. Yale University Press, New Haven 2014, ISBN 978-0-300-14090-3 .
• Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Martin Cüppers: Crescent moon and swastika. The Third Reich, the Arabs and Palestine. 3rd edition, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2011, ISBN 3-89678-728-4 .
• Jeffrey Herf : Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World. Yale UP, New Haven 2010, ISBN 0-300-14579-9 .
• Richard Lowell Rubenstein : Jihad and Genocide. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham 2010, ISBN 0-7425-6202-6
• Klaus-Michael Mallmann , Martin Cüppers: Nazi Palestine: The Plans for the Extermination of the Jews in Palestine. Enigma, 2010, ISBN 1-929631-93-6
• Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Martin Cüppers: “Elimination of the Jewish national homeland in Palestine”. The task force at the Panzer Army Africa 1942. In: Jürgen Matthäus, Klaus-Michael Mallmann (Ed.): German Jews, genocide. The Holocaust as Past and Present. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2006, ISBN 3-534-18481-5 , pp. 153-176

Web links

Commons : Mohammed Amin al-Husseini  - Collection of Images

• Literature by and about Mohammed Amin al-Husseini in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Mohammed Amin al-Husseini in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

• Phillip Landgrebe: Arab Muslims and National Socialism and the holdings of the International Tracing Service (ITS). In: Learning from history. July 31, 2017 . 
• Wolfgang G. Schwanitz : Hitler's Muslims: mosaic of Berlin's Islamic policy with question marks. (pdf; 828 kB) In: Der Tagesspiegel . April 23, 2012 (Review by Volker Koop: Hitler's Muslims. The story of an unholy alliance ; reproduced on Trafoberlin.de). 
• Wolfgang G. Schwanitz: Amin al-Husaini: Grand Mufti of Palestine in Jerusalem 1921 to 1948. (pdf; 986 kB) In: Handbuch des Antisemitismus . Volume 2/1, May 11, 2010 (reproduced on Trafoberlin.de). 
• Wolfgang G. Schwanitz: The Sheik And The Shoah: Amin al-Husaini Without Mercy Or Regret: So It Was. (pdf; 173 kB) In: The Jerusalem Post . March 25, 2009 (English, reproduced on Trafoberlin.de; with a letter to the editor from Peter Black of April 3, 2009: So It Was : “We have no argument with Wolfgang G. Schwanitz's characterization of Amin al-Husseini”.). 
• Wolfgang G. Schwanitz: Amin al-Husaini and the Holocaust: What did the Grand Mufti Know? (pdf; 959 kB) In: World Politics Review. May 8, 2008 (English, reproduced on Trafoberlin.de). 
• Wolfgang G. Schwanitz: Amin al-Husaini and the Third Reich: News from and about the Jerusalem Grand Mufti. (pdf; 4.2 MB) In: kritiknetz.de . April 11, 2008 (reproduced on Trafoberlin.de). 
• Matthias Küntzel : The Mufti's legacy: Amin el-Husseini's defining role in today's Middle East conflict. (pdf; 117 kB) In: Tribune . 46. ​​Vol. 184,4, 2007, pp. 151–158 (reproduced on matthiaskuentzel.de). 
• Gerhard Höpp: Muslims under the swastika. On the genesis of the Islamic Central Institute in Berlin e. V. In: Muslim Review. 14, 1994, pp. 16-27 , archived from the original on August 14, 2007 . 
• Klaus von Münchhausen: The dream of the great Arabia: From the life of the Grand Mufti: Advertiser for the Waffen-SS, warmongers against Israel, note to Bonn. In: The time . No. 37, September 7, 1990, archived from the original on January 20, 2012 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Zvi Elpeleg: The Grand Mufti , London 1993, p 1
2. ^ Jochen Töpfer, Max Friedrich Bergmann: Jerusalem - Berlin - Sarajevo: A sociological classification of Amin al-Husseini. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2019, ISBN 3-658-24633-2 , p. 22
3. ^ Benny Morris: 1948 - A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. Yale University Press, New Haven 2008, ISBN 0-300-14524-1 , p. 6.
4. ^ Lawrence J. Epstein: The Dream of Zion: The Story of the First Zionist Congress. Rowman & Littlefield, London 2016, ISBN 1-4422-5467-X , p. 106
5. ↑ Leslie Stein: The Hope Fulfilled: The Rise of Modern Israel. Praeger, 2003, ISBN 0-275-97141-4 , p. 44
6. ↑ Gudrun Krämer : History of Palastina: From the Ottoman conquest to the founding of the state of Israel. 6th edition, Beck, Munich 2015, ISBN 3-406-67215-9 , p. 224
7. ^ Henry Laurens: La Question de Palestine, Tome deuxieme: Une mission sacrée de civilization. Paris 2002, ( online ) p. 462.
8. ↑ Gudrun Krämer: Geschichte Palastinas , Berlin 2011, p. 219.
9. ^ Weldon C. Matthews: Confronting an Empire, Constructing a Nation: Arab Nationalists and Popular Politics in Mandate Palestine. London 2006, p. 31.
10. ↑ Eve E. Grimm: Al-Husseini, Haj Amin. In: Paul R. Bartrop, Michael Dickerman: The Holocaust: An Encyclopedia and Document Collection. ABC – CLIO, 2017, ISBN 1-4408-4083-0 , pp. 18–20, here p. 18
11. ↑ Isaiah Friedman: Palestine, a Twice-Promised Land? The British, the Arabs & Zionism 1915-1920. New Brunswick 2000, p. 192
12. ^ Richard L. Rubenstein: Jihad and Genocide , Lanham 2010, ISBN 0-7425-6202-6 , p. 60
13. ^ Benny Morris: 1948 - A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. New Haven 2008, p. 8
14. ↑ David Patterson: A Genealogy of Evil: Anti-Semitism from Nazism to Islamic Jihad. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2010, ISBN 0-521-13261-4 , p. 109
15. ↑ Tilman Tarach: The Eternal Scapegoat. 5th edition, Edition Telok, Berlin 2016, ISBN 3-9813486-2-1 , p. 33
16. ↑ Tom Segev: Once upon a time there was a Palestine - Jews and Arabs before the founding of the state of Israel. 4th edition, Munich 2007, p. 174 ff.
17. ^ Gilbert Achcar: The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Historiography. Edition Nautilus, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 3-96054-126-0 , p. 215
18. ↑ Sönke Zankel: The Jew as Anti-Muslim. Amin al-Husseini and the "Jewish Question". In: Niklas Günther, Sönke Zankel (Ed.): Abrahams Enkel. Jews, Christians, Muslims and the Shoah. Steiner, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-515-08979-9 , pp. 41–52, here p. 42
19. ↑ Daniel Rickenbacher: The "Jewish-Western War Against Islam". In: Marc Grimm, Bodo Kahmann (Ed.): Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century: Virulence of an Old Enmity in Times of Islamism and Terror. De Gruyter / Oldenbourg, Munich 2018, ISBN 3110534711 , p. 161
20. ↑ Tilman Tarach: The Eternal Scapegoat. Berlin 2016, p. 34 f.
21. ↑ Klaus Michael Mallmann, Martin Cüppers: Halbmond und Hakenkreuz , Darmstadt 2011, p. 19 f.
22. ↑ Navras Jaat Aafreedi: Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism among South Asian Muslims. In: Marc Grimm, Bodo Kahmann (Ed.): Antisemitism in the 21st Century , Munich 2018, pp. 180f.
23. ↑ Martin Kramer: Islam Assembled. The Advent of the Muslim Congresses. Columbia University Press, New York 1986, pp. 123-141.
24. ↑ Zvi Elpeleg: The Grand Mufti , London 1993, p 35f.
25. ^ Gudrun Krämer: History of Palestine: From the Ottoman conquest to the establishment of the state of Israel. Beck, Munich 2015, ISBN 9783406673740 , p. 295
26. ^ Uri M. Kupferschmidt: The Supreme Muslim Council: Islam Under the British Mandate for Palestine. Leiden 1987, SS 249f.
27. ↑ Gudrun Krämer: History of Palestine , Munich 2015, pp. 335–338
28. ↑ Zvi Elpeleg: The Grand Mufti , London, 1993, pp 41-50
29. ^ Matthias Küntzel: Islamic anti-Semitism as a research area. In: Marc Grimm, Bodo Kahmann (Ed.): Antisemitism in the 21st Century , Munich 2018, p. 150
30. ^ Wolfgang G. Schwanitz: al-Husaini, Muhammad Amin. In: Wolfgang Benz (Ed.): Handbook of Antisemitism Volume 2: People. Berlin 2009, p. 9f.
31. ↑ David G. Dalin, John F. Rothmann: Icon of Evil , London 2009, p. 51
32. ↑ Michael J. Cohen: Palestine and the Great Powers, 1945-1948. Princeton University Press, 2016, ISBN 0-691-63877-2 , p. 20
33. ^ Gilbert Achcar: Die Araber und der Holocaust , Hamburg 2012, p. 232f.
34. ↑ Klaus Gensicke: The Mufti of Jerusalem , 2007, p. 30.
35. ^ Rolf Steininger: Germany and the Middle East: From Kaiser Wilhelm's Orientreise 1898 to the present. Lau-Verlag, Reinbek 2015, ISBN 3-95768-164-2 , p. 57
36. ↑ ^{a b} Tilman Tarach: The Eternal Scapegoat. Berlin 2016, p. 42
37. ↑ Jochen Töpfer, Max Friedrich Bergmann: Jerusalem - Berlin - Sarajevo , Wiesbaden 2019, p. 99
38. ^ David G. Dalin, John F. Rothmann: Icon of Evil , London 2009, p. 57
39. ↑ Tilman Tarach: The Eternal Scapegoat. Berlin 2016, pp. 65–69
40. ↑ Tilman Tarach: The Eternal Scapegoat. Berlin 2016, p. 70 and note 102.
41. ^ ^{A b} Wolfgang G. Schwanitz: Amin al-Husaini and the Third Reich: News from and about the Jerusalem Grand Mufti. (pdf; 4.2 MB) In: kritiknetz.de . April 11, 2008, accessed on March 31, 2021 (reproduced on Trafoberlin.de). 
42. ↑ ^{a b c} Zvi Elpeleg: The Grand Mufti , London 1993, pp. 63-66
43. ↑ ^{a b} Zvi Elpeleg: The Grand Mufti , 1993, p. 56f.
44. ^ ^{A b} Edwin Black: Banking on Baghdad: Inside Iraq's 7,000-Year History of War, Profit, and Conflict. (2004) Dialog Press, Washington DC 2018, ISBN 0914153382 , p. 310
45. ↑ Tilman Tarach: The Eternal Scapegoat. Berlin 2016, p. 70
46. ^ Eve E. Grimm: Al Husseini, Haj Amin (1875-1974). In: Paul R. Bartrop, Eve E. Grimm: Perpetrating the Holocaust: Leaders, Enablers, and Collaborators. ABC-CLIO, 2019, ISBN 1-4408-5897-7 , p. 4
47. ↑ Shelomo Alfassa (ed.): Reference Guide to the Nazis and Arabs During the Holocaust. International Sephardic Leadership Council. New York 2006, ISBN 978-0-9763226-3-4 , p. 18
48. ↑ ^{a b} Zvi Elpeleg: The Grand Mufti , 1993, p. 58f.
49. ^ Georges Bensoussan: Jews in Arab Countries: The Great Uprooting. Indiana University Press, 2019, ISBN 0-253-03857-X , p. 355
50. ^ Edwin Black: Banking on Baghdad: Inside Iraq's 7,000-Year History of War, Profit, and Conflict. Washington DC 2018, p. 313
51. ↑ Klaus Gensicke: Der Mufti von Jerusalem , 2007, p. 85
52. ↑ Klaus Michael Mallmann, Martin Cüppers: Halbmond und Hakenkreuz , Darmstadt 2011, p. 74
53. ↑ Klaus Michael Mallmann, Martin Cüppers: Halbmond und Hakenkreuz , Darmstadt 2011, p. 79f.
54. ↑ Klaus Michael Mallmann, Martin Cüppers: Halbmond und Hakenkreuz , Darmstadt 2011, p. 73.
55. ↑ Zvi Elpeleg: The Grand Mufti , 1993, p 60
56. ↑ Frank Schellenberg: Between global memory discourse and regional perspective: German National Socialism in the debates of Arab intellectuals since the end of the Cold War. Ergon, 2018, ISBN 3-95650-400-3 , p. 82.
57. ^ David Patterson: A Genealogy of Evil , Cambridge 2010, p. 114
58. ↑ ^{a b} Richard L. Rubenstein: Jihad and Genocide , Lanham 2010, p. 77
59. ↑ Simon Sebag Montefiore: Jerusalem, the biography. 4th edition, S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2014, ISBN 3-596-17631-X , p. 537
60. ^ Eve E. Grimm: Al-Husseini, Haj Amin. In: Paul R. Bartrop, Michael Dickerman: The Holocaust , 2017, pp. 18–20, here p. 19
61. ^ Richard L. Rubenstein: Jihad and Genocide , Lanham 2010, p. 78
62. ↑ Rolf Steininger: Germany and the Middle East , Reinbek 2015, pp. 80-82 ; Full text in NS-Archiv.de
63. ↑ Simon Sebag Montefiore: Jerusalem, die Biographie , Frankfurt am Main 2014, p. 538
64. ^ ^{A b} David Patterson: A Genealogy of Evil , Cambridge 2010, p. 115 ; Joseph Schechtman: The Mufti and the Fuehrer , New York 1965, p. 306
65. ↑ Moshe Zimmermann: How the victims deal with the perpetrators' propaganda. Israel and the Nazis. In: Christian Kuchler (ed.): Nazi propaganda in the 21st century. Between a ban and a public debate. Böhlau, Cologne 2014, p. 219.
66. ↑ Bettina Stangneth: Eichmann before Jerusalem: The unmolested life of a mass murderer. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2014, ISBN 3-499-62269-6 , p. 65
67. ↑ Klaus Michael Mallmann, Martin Cüppers: Halbmond und Hakenkreuz , Darmstadt 2011, p. 108.
68. ↑ Robert MW Kempner: The Third Reich in cross-examination. From the unpublished interrogation protocols of the prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials. With an introduction by Horst Möller . Herbig, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-7766-2441-8 , p. 305 f.
69. ↑ Tilman Tarach: The Eternal Scapegoat. Berlin 2016, p. 43
70. ↑ Dietmar Pieper , Rainer Traub (ed.): Islam: 1400 years of faith, war and culture. 2nd edition, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2011, ISBN 3-421-04520-8 , p. 139
71. ↑ Jochen Töpfer, Max Friedrich Bergmann: Jerusalem - Berlin - Sarajevo , Wiesbaden 2019, p. 119
72. ↑ Jochen Töpfer, Max Friedrich Bergmann: Jerusalem - Berlin - Sarajevo , Wiesbaden 2019, pp. 131f.
73. ^ David Patterson: A Genealogy of Evil , Cambridge 2010, p. 116
74. ↑ Shelomo Alfassa (Ed.): Reference Guide to the Nazis and Arabs During the Holocaust. New York 2006, p. 19
75. ↑ Bettina Stangneth: Eichmann before Jerusalem: the undisturbed life of a mass murderer. 2011, p. 72
76. ↑ Jeffrey Herf (Ed.): Hitler's Jihad. National Socialist Radio Propaganda for North Africa and the Middle East. Quarterly books for contemporary history , Oldenbourg, Munich 2010, PDF p. 274 (Document 4); Willi Winkler: Nazi Propaganda: The Leader from the Orient. Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 20, 2010. The text has been translated back into German from an English translation from 1942.
77. ↑ ^{a b} David Motadel: For Prophet and Leader , Stuttgart 2017, p. 81
78. ↑ Jeffrey Herf (Ed.): Hitler's Jihad. Munich 2010, PDF p. 284 (Document 13)
79. ↑ Gerhard Höpp (Ed.): Mufti-Papiere , Berlin 2001, pp. 108–111 and p. 233; quoted in Tilman Tarach: The eternal scapegoat , Berlin 2016, p. 100
80. ↑ Jeffrey Herf: Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World , New Haven 2010, pp. 201ff.
81. ↑ Willi Winkler: The shadow man: from Goebbels to Carlos: the mysterious life of François Genoud. Rowohlt, 2011, ISBN 3871346268 , p. 27
82. ↑ David Motadel: For Prophet and Leader , Stuttgart 2017, pp. 308-310
83. ↑ Hans-Christian Harten: Himmler's Teacher: The ideological training in the SS 1933-1945. Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 3-657-76644-8 , p. 415
84. ↑ Lorenz Maroldt: The Mufti of 1000 years. Tagesspiegel, August 27, 2009.
85. ^ Ian Johnson: A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the CIA, and the Muslim Brotherhood in the West. Melia, Godalming 2010, ISBN 0-15-101418-3 , p. 31
86. ↑ Shelomo Alfassa (Ed.): Reference Guide to the Nazis and Arabs During the Holocaust. New York 2006, pp. 15-17
87. ↑ Bettina Stangneth: Eichmann vor Jerusalem , Reinbek 2014, p. 65f.
88. ↑ ^{a b} Sönke Zankel: The Jew as Anti-Muslim , in: Niklas Günther, Sönke Zankel (Ed.): Abrahams Enkel , Stuttgart 2006, pp. 41–52, here p. 49
89. ^ Klaus Michael Mallmann, Martin Cüppers: Halbmond und Hakenkreuz , Darmstadt 2011, pp. 136-138
90. ↑ Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Martin Cüppers: "Elimination of the Jewish national homeland in Palestine". The task force in the Panzer Army Africa 1942. In: Jürgen Matthäus, Klaus-Michael Mallmann (Ed.): Deutsche, Juden, Genölkermord , Darmstadt 2006, p. 168
91. ↑ Tilman Tarach: The Eternal Scapegoat. Berlin 2016, p. 76
92. ^ Heidemarie Wawrzyn: Nazis in the Holy Land 1933-1948. De Gruyter, Berlin 2013, ISBN 3-11-030629-8 , p. 117
93. ↑ Tilman Tarach: The Eternal Scapegoat. Berlin 2016, p. 86 and note 140
94. ↑ Klaus Michael Mallmann, Martin Cüppers: Halbmond und Hakenkreuz , Darmstadt 2011, p. 117
95. ↑ ^{a b} Sönke Zankel: Der Jude als Anti-Muslim , in: Niklas Günther, Sönke Zankel (Ed.): Abrahams Enkel , Stuttgart 2006, pp. 41–52, here p. 48
96. ↑ Gerhard Höpp (Ed.): Mufti-Papiere , Berlin 2001, p. 164f .; Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Martin Cüppers: Halbmond und Hakenkreuz , Darmstadt 2011, p. 118
97. ^ Igal Avidan: Mod Helmy: How an Arab doctor in Berlin saved Jews from the Gestapo. dtv, Munich 2017, ISBN 9783423432856 , p. 3
98. ↑ Gerhard Höpp (Ed.): Mufti-Papiere , Berlin 2001, p. 179; Rolf Steininger: Germany and the Middle East , Reinbek 2015, p. 88
99. ↑ Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Martin Cüppers: Halbmond und Hakenkreuz , Darmstadt 2011, p. 118
100. ^ Barry Rubin, Wolfgang G. Schwanitz: Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East. New Haven 2014, p. 164 and p. 184f.
101. ^ Gilbert Achcar: The Arabs and the Holocaust , Hamburg 2012, pp. 245f.
102. ^ Richard L. Rubenstein: Jihad and Genocide , Lanham 2010, p. 87
103. ^ Richard L. Rubenstein: Jihad and Genocide , Lanham 2010, pp. 88f.
104. ^ Barry Rubin, Wolfgang G. Schwanitz: Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East. New Haven 2014, p. 164
105. ^ Richard L. Rubenstein: Jihad and Genocide , Lanham 2010, p. 90
106. ↑ Gerald Reitlinger: The final solution. Hitler's attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe 1939–1945. 7th edition, Berlin 1992, p. 488; Ernst Piper: Alfred Rosenberg. Hitler's chief ideologist. Munich 2005, p. 596.
107. ↑ David G. Dalin, John F. Rothmann: Icon of evil , London 2009, p. 74
108. ↑ Yves Azeroual: Mufti. Le Passeur, 2020, ISBN 9782368907443 , pp. 120f. ; Jörg Krummenacher: The great flow of refugees in the spring of 1945. NZZ, December 27, 2007
109. ↑ Tsilla Hershco: le grand mufti de Jerusalem en France: Histoire d'un Evasion. In: Controverses, N ° 1: Theologie politique de l'altermondialisation. Editions de l'Eclat, 2006, ISBN 2841621154 , pp. 244-275, here pp. 253f.
110. ^ Meir Zamir: The Secret Anglo-French War in the Middle East: Intelligence and Decolonization, 1940-1948. Routledge, London 2014, ISBN 1138787817 , pp. 171f.
111. ^ Richard Paul Mitchell: The Society of the Muslim Brothers. (1969) Oxford University Press, Oxford 1993, ISBN 0195084373 , ISBN 9780195084375 , p. 56
112. ↑ Sineb El Masrar: Emancipation in Islam - A reckoning with their enemies. Herder, Freiburg 2018, ISBN 3-451-03148-5 , p. 136 ; Jeffrey Herf (Ed.): Hitler's Jihad , Munich 2010, PDF p. 284f. (Document 14)
113. ^ Richard L. Rubenstein: Jihad and Genocide , Lanham 2010, p. 94
114. ↑ Tilman Tarach: The Eternal Scapegoat. Berlin 2016, p. 105
115. ↑ Robert Wistrich: The anti-Semitic madness. From Hitler to the holy war against Israel. 7th edition 2016, Edition Critic, ISBN 3946193137 , p. 315
116. ↑ Ian Johnson: The Fourth Mosque: Nazis, CIA and Islamic Fundamentalism. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-608-94622-2 , p. 194
117. ↑ Alex Feuerherdt, Florian Markl: United Nations against Israel. Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-95565-249-4 , p. 45; David Horowitz: State in the Making. Greenwood Press, 1981, p. 68
118. ↑ Alex Feuerherdt, Florian Markl: United Nations against Israel. Berlin 2018, p. 56
119. ^ Richard L. Rubenstein: Jihad and Genocide , Lanham 2010, p. 95
120. ^ Hillel Cohen: Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948. University of California Press, 2009, ISBN 0520259890 , pp. 202-229
121. ↑ Dominique Lapierre, Larry Collins: Oh Jerusalem. (1971) Simon & Schuster, 1988, ISBN 0671662414 , p. 155; Tilman Tarach: The Eternal Scapegoat. Berlin 2016, p. 109f.
122. ↑ Klaus Gensicke: The Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin el-Husseini, and the National Socialists. 1988, p. 256
123. ↑ Tilman Tarach: The Eternal Scapegoat. Berlin 2016, p. 107
124. ↑ Tilman Tarach: The Eternal Scapegoat. Berlin 2016, p. 110f.
125. ↑ Dominique Lapierre, Larry Collins: Oh Jerusalem. London 1988, pp. 166 and 487; Tilman Tarach: The Eternal Scapegoat. Berlin 2016, p. 114f.
126. ↑ Udo Steinbach: The Arab World in the 20th Century: Awakening - Upheaval - Perspectives. 2nd updated edition, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2016, ISBN 9783170325418 , p. 269
127. ↑ ^{a b} Tilman Tarach: The Eternal Scapegoat. Berlin 2016, p. 118
128. ^ Richard L. Rubenstein: Jihad and Genocide , Lanham 2010, pp. 95-97
129. ^ Rainer Bieling: To learn from Germany means to learn to remember. Welt online, 4th July 2012
130. ^ Richard L. Rubenstein: Jihad and Genocide , Lanham 2010, p. 78
131. ↑ Zvi Elpeleg: The Grand Mufti , London 1993, p 164
132. ↑ Tilman Terah: The eternal scapegoat , Berlin 2016, pp 95-100
133. ↑ Tilman Terah: The eternal scapegoat , Berlin 2016, pp 90-92
134. ^ Zach Pontz: Video of Abbas Praising Hitler Supporting Mufti, Terrorists Released. The Algemeiner, January 10, 2013
135. ↑ Nan Jacques Zilberdik, Itamar Marcus: Abbas' advisor praises Nazi collaborator as “role model”. Palwatch, July 12, 2019
136. ^ Richard L. Rubenstein: Jihad and Genocide , Lanham 2010, pp. 89f.
137. ↑ Moshe Zimmermann : How the victims deal with the perpetrators' propaganda. Israel and the Nazis. In: Christian Kuchler (ed.): Nazi propaganda in the 21st century. Between a ban and a public debate. Böhlau, Cologne 2014, p. 219f.
138. ^ David Patterson: A Genealogy of Evil , Cambridge 2010, p. 116
139. ↑ David G. Dalin, John F. Rothmann: Icon of evil , London 2009, pp. 58-61.
140. ↑ Bernard Lewis: Semites and anti-Semites. An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice. Norton & Company, New York 1999, p. 156.
141. ↑ Idith Zerṭal: Israel's Holocaust and the politics of nationhood. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2005, ISBN 0-521-85096-7 , pp. 101-103.
142. ↑ Bettina Stangneth: Eichmann before Jerusalem. The untroubled life of a mass murderer. Arche, Zurich 2011, pp. 74 f. And 552.
143. ↑ David Motadel: Islam and Nazi Germany's was. Harvard University Press, Cambridge 2014, ISBN 0-674-72460-7 , pp. 43f.
144. ↑ Zvi Elpeleg: The Grand Mufti , London 1993, p 72f.
145. ^ David G. Dalin, John F. Rothmann: Icon of Evil , London 2009, p. 15
146. ^ David G. Dalin, John F. Rothmann: Icon of evil , London 2009, pp. 107f.
147. ↑ Mufti Amin al-Husseini's personal diary revealed. In: Israelheute.com. January 21, 2021, accessed March 31, 2021 (review).