page_title: Amin al-Husseini
section_title: Al-Husseini's attempts to block Jewish refugees
hierarchical_section_title: Amin al-Husseini / Ties with the Axis Powers during World War II / The Holocaust / Al-Husseini's attempts to block Jewish refugees
context_page_description: Mohammed Amin al-Husseini was a Palestinian Arab nationalist and Muslim leader in Mandatory Palestine.
  Al-Husseini was the scion of a family of Jerusalemite Arab notables, who trace their origins to the eponymous grandson of Muhammad. After receiving an education in Islamic, Ottoman, and Catholic schools, he went on to serve in the Ottoman army in World War I. At war's end he stationed himself in Damascus as a supporter of the Arab Kingdom of Syria. Following the Franco-Syrian War and the collapse of Arab Hashemite rule in Damascus, his early position on pan-Arabism shifted to a form of local nationalism for Palestinian Arabs and he moved back to Jerusalem. From as early as 1920 he actively opposed Zionism, and was implicated as a leader of the 1920 Nebi Musa riots. Al-Husseini was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment for incitement but was pardoned by the British. In 1921, Herbert Samuel, the British High Commissioner appointed him Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a position he used to promote Islam while rallying a non-confessional Arab nationalism against Zionism. During the period 1921–1936 he was considered an important ally by the British Mandatory authorities.
context_section_description: The Mufti opposed all immigration of Jews into Palestine, and during the war he campaigned against the transfer of Jewish refugees to Palestine. No evidence has been forthcoming to show he was opposed to transferring Jews to countries outside the Middle East. The Mufti's numerous letters appealing to various governmental authorities to prevent Jewish refugees from emigrating to Palestine have been republished and widely cited as documentary evidence of his participative support for the Nazi genocide. For instance, Husseini intervened on 13 May 1943, before the meeting with Himmler when he was informed of the Holocaust, with the German Foreign Office to block possible transfers of Jews from Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania to Palestine, after reports reached him that 4,000 Jewish children accompanied by 500 adults had managed to reach Palestine. He asked the Foreign Minister "to do his utmost"  to block all such proposals, and this request was complied with. According to Idith Zertal, none of the documents presented at Eichmann's trial prove that it was the Mufti's interference, in these 'acts of total evil,' that prevented the children's rescue. In June 1943 the Mufti recommended to the Hungarian minister that it would be better to send Jews in Hungary to concentration camps in Poland rather than let them find asylum in Palestine.  A year later, on 25 July 1944 he wrote to the Hungarian foreign minister to register his objection to the release of certificates for 900 Jewish children and 100 adults for transfer from Hungary, fearing they might end up in Palestine. He suggested that if such transfers of population were deemed necessary, then
  I ask your Excellency to permit me to draw your attention to the necessity of preventing the Jews from leaving your country for Palestine, and if there are reasons which make their removal necessary, it would be indispensable and infinitely preferable to send them to other countries where they would find themselves under active control, for example, in Poland, thus avoiding danger and preventing damage.
  Achcar quotes the Mufti's memoirs about these efforts to influence the Axis powers to prevent emigration of Eastern European Jews to Palestine:
  We combatted this enterprise by writing to Ribbentrop, Himmler, and Hitler, and, thereafter, the governments of Italy, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and other countries. We succeeded in foiling this initiative, a circumstance that led the Jews to make terrible accusations against me, in which they held me accountable for the liquidation of four hundred thousand Jews who were unable to emigrate to Palestine in this period. They added that I should be tried as a war criminal in Nurenberg. 
  In September 1943, intense negotiations to rescue 500 Jewish children from the Arbe concentration camp collapsed due to the objection of al-Husseini who blocked the children's departure to Turkey because they would end up in Palestine.
caption: Haj Amin al-Husseini meeting with Heinrich Himmler (1943).
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