The Grand Mufti War Crimes

That the former Grand Mufti was responsible in large part for the Nazi program of the extermination ot the Jews was revealed by Edgar Mowrer and confirmed by Bartley Crum in the course of his investigations as mebmber of the Anglo-American Committee. Discussing his examination of the archives of the Allied Tribunal at Nurnberg, Mr Crum says:

I saw another document a deposition of Dr. Rudolph Kasztner, a Hungarian Jew, who conducted negotiations with the Nazis in attempt to ransom Hungarian Jews. Many of this dealings were with Albert Einchmann, the Gestapo specialist in Jewish affairs, who had been the confidant of the Mufti. During his negotiations Dr. Kasztner spoke frequently with one Dieter von Wisliczeny. Von Wisliczeny was at this moment held in a cell in Nurnberg as a war criminal and important witnes. "The Grand Mufti" he said, "has repeatedly sugessted to the Nazi authorities-including Hitler, von Ribbentrop, and Himmler-the extermination of Eurepean Jewry." The Mufti told Wisliczeny that the "considered this a comfortable to the Palestine problem." And Nazi records show that, accompanied by Eichmann the Grand Mufti, incnognito, visited the gas chambers of Auschwitz, where hundreds of thousands of Jews were exterminated. Hitler had instructed that in any ransoming concetration-camp inmates no Jews were to be included because an agreement had been reached with the Mufti that all Jews be exterminated. I also learned that the Hitler-Muftu agreement included relegation of Ibu Saud to secondary impotance by making the Mufti the supreme head of a new Pan-Islam. This became cleare as I read one.It was the Muftu who insisted to the Nazi leaders that no matter what deals were made, no matter what moneys were paid for the ransom of the Jews, no Jews should be permitted to go to Palestine. Negotrations were under way at that time for the ransom of the Jewish community of Bratislava. These negotiations broke down because the Mufti refused to countenance their being ransomed, and a result the entire community was liquidated. Other letters of the Mufti showed that he encouraged the deportation of European Jews to Polish extermination camps on June 5, 1943, he prosted to the Prime Minister of Bulgaria against a plan by the Bulgarian government allowing emigration of 4.000 Jewish chldren.These children he argued,presented "a degree of danger to Bulgaria whether they be kept in Bulgaria or be permiteed to depart from that country." Instead, he said, they should be sent to a place in which they would be "under stringent control-as, for instance, Poland. "The Muftis protest was sueccessful".