1941: The Mufti and Hitler
In 1941,
Haj Amin al-Husseini fled to Germany and met with
Adolf Hitler,
Heinrich Himmler,
Joachim Von Ribbentrop and other Nazi leaders. He wanted to persuade them to extend the NazisÂ’ anti-Jewish program to the Arab world.
In November 1941, the
Mufti met with Hitler, who told him the Jews were his foremost enemy. The Nazi dictator rebuffed the Mufti's requests for a declaration in support of the Arabs, however, telling him the time was not right. The Mufti offered Hitler his “thanks for the sympathy which he had always shown for the Arab and especially Palestinian cause, and to which he had given clear expression in his public speeches....The Arabs were Germany's natural friends because they had the same enemies as had Germany, namely....the Jews....” Hitler replied:
Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews. That naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine....Germany would furnish positive and practical aid to the Arabs involved in the same struggle....Germany's objective [is]...solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere....In that hour the Mufti would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world. The Mufti thanked Hitler profusely.
2
In 1945, Yugoslavia sought to indict the Mufti as a war criminal for his role in recruiting 20,000 Muslim volunteers for the
SS, who participated in the killing of Jews in Croatia and Hungary. He escaped from French detention in 1946, however, and continued his fight against the Jews from Cairo and later Beirut. He died in 1974.
The Husseini family continued to play a role in Palestinian affairs, with
Faisal Husseini, whose father was the Mufti's nephew, regarded until his death in 2001 as one of their leading spokesmen in the territories.
The Mufti and the Führer | Jewish Virtual Library