U.S. HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM ACKNOWLEDGES PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN THE ARAB LEADERSHIP AND THE NAZIS DURING THE HOLOCAUST, INCLUDING THE ‘FARHUD’, THE HOLOCAUST-ERA POGROM INSIDE IRAQ.

VICTORY FOR SEPHARDIC COMMUNITY AS TRUTH IS CONFIRMED BY INFLUENTIAL U.S. GOVERNMENT INSTITUTION

November 2, 2006

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(NEW YORK, NY) -- After several calls by the International Sephardic Leadership Council (ISLC) for investigation on why the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has failed to recognize the role the Arab leadership had with the Nazis during WWII, the Museum has made initial steps to bring the Farhud and the German/Arab conspiracy into the Museum via its Internet site.

“We salute this preliminary step by the Holocaust Museum, but it is only a start. We look forward to comprehensive future exhibits that will focus on the Holocaust and its effects outside of Europe particularly in the Arab countries,” said Shelomo Alfassa of the ISLC.

The Farhud (Arabic for violent dispossession), took place in 1941 when Arabs attacked Jews in several Iraqi cities, burning, raping, torturing and murdering members of the Jewish community. This event was the beginning of the end of 2,600 years of Jewish life in Iraq. “The Farhud, was a Holocaust-era pogrom that took place outside of Europe, an event the Museum overlooked for political reasons,” said Edwin Black, author of IBM and the Holocaust and Banking on Baghdad. “The Museum’s experts had never even heard of the Farhud until it was brought to light in media accounts, and even then tried to engage in the same type of denial regarding Sephardic Jewry that it decries for European Jewry” Black stated.

On January 18, 2006, a press conference was held at the National Press Club in Washington DC, that night, in front of a standing room only crowd, a colloquium was held at The National Synagogue, where several prominent Jewish leaders met to discuss remedies to the USHMM’s failure to document the role Islamic groups played in the Holocaust.

Sponsored by Holocaust Museum Watch (HMW) and the International Sephardic Leadership Council, the speakers included Congressman Eliot Engel (D-NY); Rabbi Avi Weiss of New York, president of AMCHA; Carol Greenwald, board member of HMW; Shelomo Alfassa, executive director of the ISLC; and Edwin Black, the award-winning New York Times best selling author. Complaints included the fact that the Museum, a federally funded government institution, had never presented an exhibit or sponsored an
event confronting Arab or Muslim anti-Semitism or the fate of Jews in Arab countries during the Holocaust. These countries include Jews from Algeria, Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, as well as others.

A formal complaint and call for investigation was requested by the International Sephardic Leadership Council after it was discovered that the chief historian of the USHMM publicly minimized and obscured, even denied, well-settled historical facts regarding the extensive relationship between the Holocaust-era Arabs and the Third Reich. One of the initial statements included the erroneous: “There was no collaboration between the Arabs and the Nazis.”

On the occasion of Yom Hashoah, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day, April 25, 2006, the International Sephardic Leadership Council once again called on the Museum to explain why they continued to decline to address the historically documented collaboration between Arabs and Nazis during the Holocaust.

Now, after months of calls for action, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has finally acknowledged the relationship between Hitler and the Arab leadership, as well as the Farhud, through information recently posted on the Museum’s Website, authored by Dr. Esther Meir-Glitzenstein of Ben Gurion University.

“It’s important that the Museum teaches that during the Holocaust, the Nazis and the Arabs conspired against the Jewish people. The Mufti's pro-Hitler propaganda played a key role in shaping opinion in the Arab world then, as it remains now. The Mufti's legacy, far from a one-time phenomenon, remains alive and well throughout the region even to this day.” said Carol Greenwald of Holocaust Museum Watch.

Mr. Alfassa added, “We see this as a success, our goal was to ensure that history recorded and taught at the Museum be historically accurate by being fully inclusive, not selective; this is a good start, and the Museum should be applauded for their step in the right direction.”

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Additional Background Quotes

“The grand mufti of Jerusalem made an alliance with Adolf Hitler during World War II. Yet, visitors to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., will learn nothing about it.” --Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) - January 26, 2006

“The revelations about the Grand Mufti's role in Hitler's Final Solution will chill even the most skeptical critic.” --Rachel Jagoda, executive director, Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust - January 23, 2006

“While the museum's permanent exhibit includes a film linking the Holocaust to the centuries of Catholic Church anti-Semitism, there is no
mention at all of the role of Islam, specifically the close alliance between the mufti of Jerusalem and Hitler. Nor is there any hint
whatsoever of the effect of the Holocaust on Jews in Arab countries, in North Africa and the Middle East, which, while not as consuming as in Europe, was still considerable and worthy of note.” --Rabbi Avi Weiss, Amcha-Coalition of Jewish Concerns - January 23, 2006 - Haaretz, March 10, 2006

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The International Sephardic Leadership Council is based in the heart of the vibrant Near-Eastern Sephardic Community of New York City, a community highly committed to Judaism, made up of 75,000 Syrian, Egyptian, Lebanese, Turkish and North African Jews; one of the largest, strongest, and fastest growing Sephardic communities in the world.