http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/muftihit.html
The Mufti and the Führer
By Mitchell Bard
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 Nazis' anti-Jewish program to the Arab world.
The Mufti sent Hitler 15 drafts of declarations he wanted Germany and Italy to
make concerning the Middle East. One called on the two countries to declare the
illegality of the Jewish home in Palestine. Furthermore, "they accord to
Palestine and to other Arab countries the right to solve the problem of the
Jewish elements in Palestine and other Arab countries, in accordance with the
interest of the Arabs and, by the same method, that the question is now being
settled in the Axis countries."1
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.
Notes
1"Grand Mufti Plotted To Do Away With All Jews In Mideast," Response, (Fall
1991), pp. 2-3.
2Record of the Conversation Between the Fuhrer and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem
on November 28, 1941, in the Presence of Reich Foreign Minister and Minister
Grobba in Berlin, Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918-1945, Series D, Vol.
XIII, London, 1964, p. 881ff in Walter Lacquer and Barry Rubin, The Israel-Arab
Reader, (NY: Facts on File, 1984), pp. 79-84.
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