Nazi Palestine : The Plans for the Extermination of the Jews in Palestine

"It is to the credit of the two authors of this book . . . that they have been assiduous in locating information either inaccessible or overlooked earlier."—Gerhard L. Weinberg The planned extermination of the Jews living in Palestine was only weeks away . . . In 1941-42 Nazi Germany appeared to be invincible in North Africa, and many Arab nationalists looked to a leader, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, for guidance. The Mufti had several meetings with Adolf Hitler. Nazi Germany also pledged to wipe out the Jews who had been living in Palestine since time immemorial as well as the new arrivals from the beginning of the modern Zionist movement in the nineteenth century and following the Balfour Declaration in 1917. A special unit was assembled and trained in Greece in the spring of 1942 by SD officer Walter Rauff, the originator of the gassing van experiments in Poland and the Soviet Union. They were to operate behind the lines with the help of those in the region who were eager to join the task force. After El Alamein, the Einsatzkommando shifted its operations to Tunisia, where it implemented cruel anti-Jewish policies for many months. Over 2,500 Tunisian Jews were to die in the camps set up by the Nazis and their collaborators. The authors have identified the relevant documents and analyzed the racist, ideological, political, and religious implications of the planning of a specific regional extermination program within the context of the Holocaust. Jihad in Palestine: The Arab rejection of the Jews Nazi sympathies: Middle East supporters of the Third Reich Shifting priorities: Jewish emigration and Germany's Arab policy War in North Africa and Mesopotamia: Cyrenaica and Iraq After Barbarossa: Germany's Mediterranean strategy in 1941-1942 The Grand Muft: Axis ally Rommel and the road to Cairo The Einsatzkommando and the Afrik Korps Arab Opinion The Jews of Palestine react The turning point: El Alamein and the end of the Caucasus option Einsatzkommando Tunis: The second front Muslim units in the Wehrmacht, SD, and Waffen SS Endgame: Agents and infiltrators Contents......Page 6 Introduction......Page 8 1......Page 14 2......Page 40 3......Page 55 4......Page 67 5......Page 84 6......Page 99 7......Page 113 8......Page 127 9......Page 137 10......Page 151 11......Page 165 12......Page 194 13......Page 212 14......Page 225 Epilogue......Page 231 Abbreviations......Page 246 Archival Sources......Page 250 Bibliography......Page 253 Index......Page 270