Non­fic­tion

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

Klaus-Michael Mall­mann & Mar­tin Cüp­pers; Krista Smith, trans.
  • Review
By – August 31, 2011
Based pri­mar­i­ly on Ger­man archival sources and archives in the USA, Britain, and Israel as well as pub­lished books and arti­cles, this study focus­es on Ger­man and Arab plans and coop­er­a­tion dur­ing World War II aimed at the exter­mi­na­tion of the Jews of Pales­tine. The authors exam­ine in detail the main ini­tia­tors and par­tic­i­pants of these plans and the spe­cial orga­ni­za­tions which were estab­lished for this pur­pose, includ­ing Mus­lim units with­in the Ger­man war machine. The study also exam­ines the rela­tions between Ger­mans and Arabs and the rival­ry between the two main Arab col­lab­o­ra­tors with Ger­many for this pur­pose and for ulti­mate­ly achiev­ing mas­tery over the Arabs: the Pales­tin­ian Hajj Amin al-Husayni and the Iraqi Rashid Ali al- Kay­lani. This is a very impor­tant study regard­ing Ger­man-Arab col­lab­o­ra­tion dur­ing World War II against the Jews in the Arab world in gen­er­al and in Pales­tine in par­tic­u­lar. Still, the Eng­lish lan­guage edi­tion could have been improved by pro­vid­ing Eng­lish cita­tions for works orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten in Eng­lish (e.g., by Win­ston Churchill) or non-Ger­man works for which an Eng­lish trans­la­tion exists (e.g., by Tom Segev). The index shows poor knowl­edge of the struc­ture of Ara­bic names. Bib­li­og­ra­phy, illus­tra­tions, index, notes
Rachel Simon, a librar­i­an at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, does research on Jews in the mod­ern Mid­dle East and North Africa, with spe­cial ref­er­ence to Libya, Ottoman Empire, women, and education.

Discussion Questions