Abstract
In the months following Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, SS squads — the so-called Einsatzgruppen — executed hundreds of Muslim prisoners of war who had fought in the Red Army, assuming that their circumcision proved that they were Jewish.1 In Berlin, these executions soon became the subject of controversy. During a meeting of officers of the Wehrmacht, SS and Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories in summer 1941, Erwin von Lahousen, an official of the Wehrmacht intelligence agency representing his boss, Wilhelm Canaris, engaged in a row with the head of the Gestapo, Heinrich Müller, about these killings. Lahousen brought up the selection of hundreds of Muslim Tatars, who had been sent to ‘special treatment’ because they were taken for Jews. Müller acknowledged that the SS had made mistakes in this respect, remarking that it was the first time that he had heard that Muslims were circumcised like Jews. A few weeks later, Müller’s superior, Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Security Main Office, sent out instructions urging the Einsatzgruppen to be more careful: The ‘circumcision’ and ‘Jewish appearance’ could not be taken as sufficient ‘proof of Jewish descent’, he made clear.2 Muslims and Jews were not to be confused. In the following year, the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories issued a similar directive on the identification of ‘Jews’ in the Eastern territories, warning that only in the western Russian territories could circumcision be seen as a proof of Jewishness. ‘In those regions, though, in which Mohammedans exist we will not be able to base the Jewishness of the person on circumcision alone’.3 There, other indicators, such as names, origins and ethnic appearance, had to be considered as well.
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Notes
David Motadel, Islam and Nazi Germany’s War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014).
Joseph B. Schechtman, The Mufti and the Fuehrer: The Rise and Fall of Haj Amin el-Husseini (London: Thomas Yoseloff, 1965), 154–159;
Jennie Lebel, The Mufti of Jerusalem Haj-Amin El-Husseini and National-Socialism (Belgrade: Cigoja, 2007), 246–255;
Klaus Gensicke, The Mufti of Jerusalem and the Nazis: The Berlin Years, 1941– 1945 (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2011), 117–129.
An overview of the literature on al-Husayni is given by Gerhard Höpp, ‘Der Gefangene im Dreieck: Zum Bild Amin alHusseinis in Wissenschaft und Publizistik seit 1941: Ein Bio-Bibliographischer Abriß,’ in Rainer Zimmer-Winkel (ed.), Eine umstrittene Figur: Hadj Amin al-Husseini, Mufti von Jerusalem (Trier: Aphorisma, 1999), 5–23.
A more general account of Nazi Germany’s anti-Jewish propaganda in Arabic is Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda to the Arab World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).
There is a vast body of literature on the subject. See, for instance, on Iraq, Peter Wien, Iraqi Arab Nationalism: Authoritarian, Totalitarian and Pro-Fascist Inclinations, 1932–1941 (London: Routledge, 2006);
on Palestine, Nezam Al-Abbasi, ‘Die palästinensische Freiheitsbewegung im Spiegel ihrer Presse von 1929 bis 1945’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Freiburg, 1981);
René Wildangel, Zwischen Achse und Mandatsmacht: Palästina und der Nationalsozialismus (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 2007);
on Lebanon and Syria, Götz Nordbruch, Nazism in Syria and Lebanon: The Ambivalence of the German Option, 1933–1945 (London: Routledge, 2009);
on Egypt, Edmond Cao-Van-Hoa, “Der Feind meines Feindes…”: Darstellungen des nationalsozialistischen Deutschland in ägyptischen Schriften (Frankfurt M: Peter Lang, 1990);
Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, Confronting Fascism and Egypt: Dictatorship versus Democracy in the 1930s (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010);
Israel Gershoni and Götz Nordbruch, Sympathie und Schrecken: Begegnungen mit Faschismus und Nationalsozialismus in Ägypten, 1922–1937 (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 2011);
and the contributions in Israel Gershoni (ed.), Arab Responses to Fascism and Nazism: Attraction and Repulsion (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2014);
on the postwar memory, Gilbert Achcar, The Arabs and the Holocaust (London: Saqi, 2010);
see also the historiographical reviews of the literature on perceptions and influences of Nazism in the Arab world by Peter Wien, ‘Coming to Terms with the Past: German Academia and Historical Relations between the Arab Lands and Nazi Germans,’ International Journal of Middle East Studies, 42: 2 (2010), 311–321;
and Götz Nordbruch, ‘“Cultural Fusion” of Thought and Ambitions? Memory, Politics and the History of Arab-Nazi German Encounters,’ Middle Eastern Studies, 47: 1 (2011), 183–194.
There are a number of studies that have pointed to individual cases of Muslims in North Africa and the Balkans who helped their Jewish compatriots during the years of Vichy, Fascist and Nazi persecution, see Robert Satloff, Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust’s Long Reach into Arab Lands (New York: Public Affairs, 2006);
Norman Gershman, Besa: Muslims who saved Jews in World War II (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008).
On the Holocaust in France, see Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews (New York: Basic Books, 1981);
Jacques Adler, The Jews ofParis and the Final Solution: Communal Response and Internal Conflicts, 1940–1944 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987);
Susan Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews (New York: Basic Books, 1993);
Renée Poznanski, Jews in France During World War II (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2001);
Adam Rayski, The Choice of the Jews Under Vichy: Between Submission and Resistance (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005);
Ahlrich Meyer, Täter im Verhiir: Die ‘Endliisung der Judenfrage’ in Frankreich 1940–1944 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2005), 380;
on the occupation more generally, Julian T. Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940– 1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001);
Robert Gildea, Marianne in Chains: In Search of the German Occupation 1940–1945 (London: Macmillan, 2002);
Richard Vinen, The Unfree French: Life under the Occupation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006).
Alain Boyer, L’Institut Musulman de la Mosquée de Paris (Paris: Cheam, 1992), 19–33;
Michel Renard, ‘Gratitude, Contrôle, Accompagnement: Le Traitement du Religieux Islamique en Métropole (1914–1950),’ Bulletin de l’Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent, 83 (2004), 54–69;
Idem, ‘Les Débuts de la Présence Musulmane en France et son Encadrement,’ in Mohammed Arkoun (ed.), Histoire de l’Islam et des Musulmans en France du Moyen Age à Nos Jours (Paris: Albin Michel, 2006), 712–740, 718–730;
as well as the general studies by Pascal Le Pautremat, La Politique Musulmane de la France au XXe Siècle: De l’Hexagone aux Terres d’Islam (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2003), 333–342;
Sadek Sellam, La France et ses Musulmans: Un siècle de politique musulmane (1895–2005) (Paris: Fayard, 2006), 171–184;
and Naomi Davidson, Only Muslim: Embodying Islam in Twentieth-Century France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 36–61,
provide studies of the Paris mosque and its rector, Si Kaddour Benghrabrit; see also biographical studies of Benghabrit by Jalila Sbaï, ‘Trajectoire d’un homme et d’une idée: Si Kaddour Ben Ghabrit et l’Islam de France, 1892–1926,’ Hespéris Tamuda, 39: 1 (2001), 45–58;
and Hamza Ben Driss Ottmani, Kaddour Benghabrit: Un Maghrébin hors du commun (Rabat: Marsam, 2010).
Robert Assaraf, Mohammed Vet les Juifs du Maroc à l’époque de Vichy (Paris: Plon, 1997).
On the Second World War in the Balkans, see Jozo Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001);
for Muslim-populated Bosnia and Herzegovina, Enver Redži´c, Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Second World War (London: Frank Cass, 2005);
Marko Attila Hoare, The Bosnian Muslims in the Second World War: A History (London: Hurst, 2013);
for Albania, Bernd J. Fischer, Albania at War 1939–1945 (London: Hurst, 1999);
Hubert Neuwirth, Widerstand und Kollaboration in Albanien 1939–1944 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 2008).
On the German occupation of the Caucasus and the Crimea, see Alexander Dallin, German Rule in Russia, 1941–1945: A Study of Occupation Policies (London: Macmillan, 1957), 226–252 (Caucasus) and 253–275 (Crimea);
Patrik von zur Mühlen, Zwischen Hakenkreuz und Sowjetstern: Der Nationalismus der Sowjetischen Orientvölker im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1971), 189–193 (Caucasus)
and 183–187 (Crimea); Andrej Angrick, Besatzungspolitik und Massenmord: Die Einsatzgruppe D in der Südlichen Sowjetunion 1941–1943 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2003), 545–715 (Caucasus) and 323–361 and 452–544 (Crimea).
On the German occupation of the Crimea in particular, see Michel Luther, ‘Die Krim unter deutscher Besetzung im Zweiten Weltkrieg,’ Forschungen zur Osteuropäischen Geschichte, 3 (1956), 28–98;
Norbert Kunz, Die Krim unter Deutscher Herrschaft 1941–1944: Germanisierungsutopie und Besatzungsrealität (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2005).
On the German occupation of the Caucasus in particular, see Joachim Hoffmann, Kaukasien 1942/43: Das deutsche Heer und Orientvoelker der Sowjetunion (Freiburg: Rombach, 1991).
Martin Holler, Der Nationalsozialistische Völkermord an den Roma in der besetzten Sowjetunion (1941–1944) (Heidelberg: Dokumentations- und Kulturzentrum Deutscher Sinti und Roma, 2009), 78–101 (Crimea) and 101–107 (North Caucasus);
Mikhail Tyaglyy, ‘Were the “Chingené” Victims of the Holocaust? Nazi Policy toward the Crimean Roma, 1941–1944,’ Holocaust and Genocide Studies 23: 1 (2009), 26–53.
Beate Meyer, “Jüdische Mischlinge”: Rassenpolitik und Verfolgungserfahrung 1933–1945 (Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz, 1999);
James F. Tent, In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Nazi Persecution ofJewish-Christian Germans (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2003).
Bryan Mark Rigg, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2002);
Gerhard Wolf, Ideologie und Herrschaftsrationalitilt: Nationalsozialistische Germanisierungspolitik in Polen (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2012);
see also, more generally, Isabel Heinemann, Rasse, Siedlung, deutsches Blut: Das Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt der SS und die rassenpolitische Neuordnung Europas (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003).
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Motadel, D. (2015). Veiled Survivors: Jews, Roma and Muslims in the Years of the Holocaust. In: Rüger, J., Wachsmann, N. (eds) Rewriting German History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137347794_16
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