But how exactly could Nazi Germany of all countries conduct a religious propaganda campaign? The German ambassador at Tehran, Erwin Ettel had an idea.
“The way to directly connect up with Shiite ideas is through the treatment of the Jewish question, which the Muslim perceives in religious terms and which, precisely for this reason, makes him susceptible to National Socialism on religious grounds”, Ettel recommended to the German Foreign Office. “A way to foster this development would be to highlight Muhammad’s struggle against the Jews in the old days and that of the Führer in modern times. By, additionally, identifying the British and the Jews, an exceptionally effective anti-English propaganda campaign can be conducted among the Shiite people.”[8]
The Nazi’s anti-Jewish incitement within the Islamic world built on the traditional, Islamically-prescribed exclusion of the Jews. It was radicalised by Nazi propaganda, the crucial medium for which was a short-wave radio channel that, since 1939, broadcast Goebbels’ antisemitism from Germany to the Middle East.
This radio channel disseminated the Nazi ideology in a multitude of languages to many parts of the world. The Orient Department, with 80 employees, was its largest foreign-language department, catering to Arabs, Turks, Persians and Indians.
We know from many contemporary reports that, at a time when people mainly listened to the radio in town squares or in bazaars and coffee houses, the Nazi broadcast was very popular. “Even if we do broadcast in Persian”, wrote Reader Bullard, the British Ambassador in Tehran, in 1940, “we cannot hope to rival the Germans in interest, as their more violent, abusive style, with exaggerated claims … appeals to the Persian public.”[9]
Let me summarize my second point: Radio programs in Muslim languages – broadcast between 1939 and 1945 several times a day – served not only the purpose of preparing the arrival of the German army but also of inciting the hatred of Jews. One example: In July 1942, on the eve of Rommels expected invasion of Cairo – only six month after the Wannsee conference – the Axis radio addressed the Egyptian people as follows: “Kill the Jews, burn their property, destroy their stores, annihilate these base supporters of British imperialism. Your sole hope of salvation lies in annihilating the Jews before they annihilate you.”[10] This brings me to my last remark.
The Nazi radio ceased operation in April 1945. But it was only after that date that its frequencies of hate really began to reverberate in the Arab world. I cannot go into details today but if you study this issue you will find a striking similarity between the Jew-hatred of the Nazis’ Arab propaganda and the Jew-hatred of Islamists today.
At the end of 1941, Hans Frank, a leading Nazi official, declared : “We must annihilate the Jews wherever we meet them and whenever it is at all possible.”[11] In 1944, the Mufti of Jerusalem repeated this message via the Nazi transmitter: „Kill the Jews whereever you find them. This pleases God, history and religion.”[12] In 1946, after the war, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, praised the Mufti as follows: „O Amin! What a great, stubborn, terrific, wonderful man you are! …Germany and Hitler are gone, but Amin Al-Hussaini will continue the struggle.”[13] My last quote is from 2009: “Oh Allah, take this oppressive, Jewish, Zionist band of people. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one.”[14] This appeal stems from a former friend of a former mayor of this city –Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the most prominent member of the Muslim Brotherhood today.
It was the Wannsee Conference which “counted” the Jews’ number in order “to kill them, down to the very last one”, indeed.
This conference decided on a crime which was and will remain unparalleled. The echo of Wannsee, however, still exists and also the willingness to propagate and to prepare for a new Holocaust.
Our remembrance of the Wannsee Conference would lose much of its value if it did not also serve to sharpen our attention with regards to the contemporary threats to the Jews and the Jewish State of Israel. I would therefore like to end my statement with Fanny Englard’s words:
“Here in Israel, many Holocaust survivors created new families to replace those that were murdered. However, we did not create these new families in order to sacrifice them in the wars repeatedly inflicted on us by the Jew-hatred of the Mufti of Jerusalem and Hitler’s Islamist heirs… This Jew-hatred compels us to engage in a fight for life; this is not a war to kill others, but a fight for life to secure a safe future for the new families. Did we survive and found a new family in order to sacrifice them to the same Jew-hatred again?” —————
This article first appeared on http://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/the-wannsee-legacy-lessons-for-genocide-prevention
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