INTERNATIONAL SEPHARDIC LEADERSHIP COUNCIL
November 2, 2006
After
a public meeting and call for investigation, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
has acknowledged the conspiracy between the Arab leadership and the Nazi during
the Holocaust, including the ‘Farhud’, the Holocaust-era Iraqi pogrom.
(NEW YORK, NY) -- After several calls for
investigation on why the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has failed to recognize
the role the Arab leadership had with the Nazis during WWII, the Museum has
made initial steps to bring the Farhud and the German/Arab conspiracy
into the Museum via its Internet site through a scholarly paper on the Farhud.
“We salute this preliminary step by the
Holocaust Museum, but it is only a start. We look forward to comprehensive
future exhibits that will focus on the Holocaust and its effects outside of
Europe particularly in the Arab countries,” said Shelomo Alfassa of the International
Sephardic Leadership Council.
The Farhud (Arabic for violent
dispossession), took place in 1941 when Arabs attacked Jews in several
cities, burning, raping, torturing and murdering members of the Iraqi Jewish
community. This event was the beginning of the end of 2,600 years of Jewish
life in Iraq. “The Farhud, was a Holocaust-era pogrom that took place outside
of Europe, an event the Museum overlooked for political reasons,” said Edwin
Black, author of IBM and the Holocaust and Banking on Baghdad.
On January 18, 2006, a press conference
was held at the National Press Club in Washington DC, and that night in front
of a standing room only crowd, a colloquium was held at The National
Synagogue, where several prominent Jewish leaders met to discuss remedies
to the USHMM’s failure to document the role Islamic groups played in the
Holocaust.
Sponsored by Holocaust Museum Watch (HMW)
and the International Sephardic Leadership Council (ISLC), the speakers
included Congressman Eliot Engel (D-NY); Rabbi Avi Weiss of New York, president
of AMCHA; Carol Greenwald, board member of HMW; Shelomo Alfassa,
executive director of the ISLC; and Edwin Black, the award-winning New York
Times best selling author. Complaints included the fact that the Museum, a
federally funded government institution, had never presented an exhibit or
sponsored an event confronting Arab or Muslim anti-Semitism or the fate of Jews
in Arab countries during the Holocaust. These countries include Jews from
Algeria, Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, as well as others.
A formal complaint and call for
investigation was called for by the International Sephardic Leadership after it
was discovered that the chief historian of the USHMM publicly minimized and
obscured, even denied, well-settled historical facts regarding the extensive
relationship between the Holocaust-era Arabs and the Third Reich. One of the
initial statements included the erroneous: “There was no collaboration between
the Arabs and the Nazis.”
On the occasion of Yom
Hashoah, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day, April 25,
2006, the International Sephardic Leadership Council once again called on the
Museum to explain why they continued to decline to address the historically
documented collaboration between Arabs and Nazis during the Holocaust.
Now, after months of calls
for action, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has finally acknowledged the
relationship between Hitler and the Arab leadership, as well as the Farhud,
through a well-developed paper recently posted on the Museum’s Website, authored
by Dr. Esther Meir-Glitzenstein of Ben Gurion University.
“It’s important that the
Museum teaches that during the Holocaust, the Nazis and the Arabs conspired
against the Jewish people. The Mufti's pro-Hitler propaganda played a key role
in shaping opinion in the Arab world then, as it remains now. The Mufti's
legacy, far from a one-time phenomenon, remains alive and well throughout the
region even to this day.” said Carol Greenwald of Holocaust Museum Watch.
Mr. Alfassa added, “We see
this as a success, our goal was to ensure that history recorded and taught at
the Museum be historically accurate by being fully inclusive, not selective;
this is a good start, and the Museum should be applauded for their step in the
right direction.”
Additional Background Quotes
“The grand mufti of Jerusalem made an alliance
with Adolf Hitler during World War II. Yet, visitors to the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., will learn nothing about it.” --Jewish Telegraphic
Agency (JTA)
“Husseini's ties with Nazi Germany are well
known - he met with Adolf Eichmann and offered Hitler any help he could supply
in murdering Europe's Jews and Jews worldwide. His actions are not mentioned at
all in the Holocaust museum.”--New York Sun
“The revelations about the Grand Mufti's role in
Hitler's Final Solution will chill even the most skeptical critic.” --Rachel Jagoda,
executive director, Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust
“While the museum's permanent exhibit includes a
film linking the Holocaust to the centuries of Catholic Church anti-Semitism,
there is no mention at all of the role of Islam, specifically the close
alliance between the mufti of Jerusalem and Hitler. Nor is there any hint
whatsoever of the effect of the Holocaust on Jews in Arab countries, in North
Africa and the Middle East, which, while not as consuming as in Europe, was
still considerable and worthy of note.” --Rabbi Avi Weiss, Amcha-Coalition of
Jewish Concerns