Norman Davies Quotes
I first came across the Anders Army story by accident. When I first went to live in Oxford in the 1960s, I discovered that some of my close neighbours had been on the Anders trail.
Davies, Norman. Trail of Hope: The Anders Army, An Odyssey Across Three Continents. Osprey Publishing, 2015.
The Nazis and most of the Arabs were allies in WWII. The Jews of Palestine—although they were opposed to many of the British policies regarding Palestine—were active in the Allied cause contributing units to the British Army. Although the Germans were brutal to civilians, murdering millions, they refrained from public pronouncements or exhortations to kill civilians in most cases. The Arabs did not. The Mufti was actually given the rank of General in the Nazi SS and had his own SS unit. In this despicable exhortation he actually uses a concept and wording from the Koran. See {584355}. This quotation is important in that it refutes a common claim by some Palestinians that it was only the Germans who were responsible for the Holocaust and the post war Jewish Refugee problem and that the Palestinians had to bear the price rather than place Israel in Europe. This quotation and the other by the Grand Mufti prove that Palestinians were not only complicit in persecution of Jews but took a leadership and advocacy role.
The Germans allied themselves with the Islamic insurgency of the day as a strategic maneuver. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem broadcast propaganda from Nazi radio in Berlin and was dispatched to organize Muslim fighters in Iraq. Fascism was introduced into the Middle East and the Arabs and Persians saw it as a natural extension of their authoritarian and highly prescriptive forms of religious and civil government. 60 years later, there would be Islamic Fascists throughout the Middle East in control or vying for control of many of the countries.
Ironically Germany and almost all Germans have repudiated the Nazi era and atrocities against the Jews and others. However, the Arabs many of whom were Nazi WWII allies still hold and spew false and dangerous Nazi propaganda. See {584354} for some of the earlier Arab Nazi activity.
Romanians of Jewish and German ancestry who left Romania and went to the West often sent money back to their families in Romania. So in a sense they were exports like oil which brought hard currency to Romania which needed it badly.
Ivor Norman Richard Davies CMG FBA FRHistS is a Welsh-Polish historian known for his publications on the history of Europe, Poland and the United Kingdom. He has a special interest in Central and Eastern Europe and is UNESCO Professor at the Jagiellonian University, professor emeritus at University College London, a visiting professor at the Collège d'Europe, and an honorary fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford. He was granted Polish citizenship in 2014.
