Following is an edited excerptfrom The Farhud, Roots of theArab-Nazi Alliance During theHolocaust (Dialog 2010), byEdwin Black, author of theacclaimed exposé IBM and theHolocaust (Crown Publishing,2001).

In the hierarchy of Hell that cre-ated the Holocaust, one groupof killers stands out as more

vicious, murderous and bloodcur-dling than all others: the Ustasha ofYugoslavia, an anti-Semitic andanti-Serbian Muslim-Catholicalliance of killers so beastly thateven Berlin shirked in horror attheir depravity. The Ustasha, andthree related crack divisions of theArab-Nazi Waffen SS comprisedof tens of thousands of Muslimvolunteers, terrorized people of allfaiths in Yugoslavia.

In large measure, these murdermachines emerged through theefforts of the Grand Mufti ofJerusalem, the militant Palestinianleader Haj Amin al-Husseini, whoestablished a personal relationshipand partnership with Adolf Hitler.The epic story of this alliance ofhate is one that begins inJerusalem, travels to Baghdad,goes on to the killing fields of theBalkans and ultimately returns tothe Middle East.

In many ways, the scene was setcenturies ago, in 627 A.D., by theMedina Extermination. Medinawas a largely Jewish city. When its600 or so Jews refused to convertto the new Muslim religion, theProphet Muhammad mass-mur-dered them in a protracted ceremo-

ny, beheading the Jewish faithfulone by one. This massacre becamean iconic event in Islamic history,as memorable to Muslims as theSermon on the Mount is toChristians or the parting of the RedSea is to Jews.

After Medina, the IslamicConquest swept across the MiddleEast and North Africa, forciblyconverting all, and inventing theMuslim World. In about 700, thePact of Umar declared that Jewsand Christians under Muslim con-trol could continue as non-Muslims, but only as dhimmis, thatis, second-class citizens reviled for

their existence and denied manyordinary rights. Dhimmis couldpractice their religion only underoften-denigrating restrictions.Throughout the ages whiledwelling in the various realms ofthe Muslim world, Jews andChristians were either allowed toexcel and thrive, or were brutallyrepressed and persecuted, depend-ing upon the decade and territory.

But the context of their existence— whether successful or subjugat-ed — was always as second-classcitizens deserving death if Koranicinjunctions were observed.

Islam’s many hateful anti-Jewish mandates were not justancient textual relics, but continu-ous inspiration and guidance rightthrough the 20th century, oft quot-ed by Islamic leaders in manylands throughout the centuries.

Following the armistice thatended World War I, the League ofNations, Britain, France, the U.S.,Germany, and finally Turkeyendorsed a Jewish homeland, eachwith a formal resolution resem-bling that of the BalfourDeclaration. It ignited a seismicoutrage among Arabs. The verythought of Jews living as equalswas vile and anathema toPalestinian Arabs. From 1920,their regular rallying call was“Itbach al-Yahud!” — Slaughterthe Jews! With knives and rifles, insmall spontaneous groups andorganized mobs, Arabs murderedPalestinian Jews, burned their

Torahs and laid waste to their syn-agogues. In 1929, a mob of Arabkillers swarmed over Hebron andslaughtered dozens of Jews. TheJewish baker was baked in his ownoven. A Jewish scholar’s brain wasextricated and used as a ball.

In 1937, the Peel Report, com-missioned by the British, conclud-ed that two states should be creat-ed, one Arab and one Jewish, liv-ing side by side. But the Muslimworld would not tolerate the notionof coexistence with Jews as equals.

The leader of the Palestinianswas al-Husseini. After the PeelReport was issued, the Mufti andhis loyal followers launched a

murderous, non-stop insurrectionknown as the Arab Revolt. Whenthe British tried to arrest him, theMufti fled to Iraq, where he founda virulent and widely embracedArab-Nazi movement. On June 1-2, 1941, after a failed Nazi-Arabattempt to exterminate the Jews ofIraq, Baghdad Nazis, the policeand national military units went ona two-day murder spree. Once theBritish finally restored order, theMufti fled again, this time to Iran,where another Nazi takeover wasthwarted. From Iran, the Mufti andhis cohorts escaped to Berlin tomeet with Hitler.

In Berlin, a pact was sealed toprovide Arab oil and battlefieldmilitary assistance sufficient tohelp the Nazi push into Russia inexchange for recognizing an Arabnational state and exterminatingthe Jews. Arab military unitsformed from Paris to Palestine.Arabs and Muslims worldwide, on

JEWISH WORLD • FEBRUARY 11-17, 2011 3

continued on page 20

The Ustasha HorrorWWII’s murderous Catholic-Muslim alliance against the Jews

Arabs and Muslims world-

wide called for theextermination of

the Jews. The rallying crywas: ‘In Heaven,

Allah is your master. On Earth it

is Adolf Hitler.’

Haj Amin al-Husseini, grand mufti ofJerusalem, meets with Hitler. The muftiwas considered a “special friend” ofHitler.

the radio and in newspapers, inces-santly and openly called for theextermination of the Jews. The ral-lying cry was: “In Heaven, Allah isyour master. On Earth it is AdolfHitler.”

When Heinrich Himmler need-ed to fight the partisans of

Yugoslavia to protect German sup-ply lines, the Mufti visited theregion and helped organize tens ofthousands of Muslims and Arabsinto three Waffen SS divisions.Those three divisions fought abloody trench and mountain war-fare against partisans in Albania,Bosnia, Croatia and the otherBalkan territories.

Concomitantly, a Nazi murdermilitia, known as Ustasha, was cre-ated from a legion of Catholic and

Muslim killers. In the Croatianmaelstrom of ethnic and religioushatred, steered by Nazi mentors andpuppetmasters, Catholic Croatsironically decreed that all Muslimswere Croats. This enabled theCatholic Croats to establish amajority in their enlarged territorialdomain. That enlarged IndependentState of Croatia was known in thedialect as Nezavisna DrzavaHrvatska, or the NDH. The NDH’sall-controlling killing and terrormilitia was the Ustasha, who cameto be one of the most effective andfearsome killing forces in theHolocaust.

Although Muslims were a minor-ity in the NDH, the BosnianMuslim faction and the CroatianCatholics jointly ruled and jointlymurdered. The NDH’s fascistextremist president was a staunchHitler ally and former Jesuit semi-narian, Ante Pavelic. His officialtitle was Poglavnik, a Croatianword that approximates der Führer.

The vice president was the MuslimOsman Dza-ferbeg Kulenovic, pre-viously president of the YugoslavMoslem Organization, a Bosniannationalist organization.

The Croatian Minister of Cultureand Education was Mile Budak, arabid Catholic-Nazi who enthusias-

tically proclaimed, in 1941, “WeCroats are happy and proud of our[Christian] faith, but we must beconscious of the fact that ourMuslim brothers are the purest ofCroats.”

In July 1941, Budak openlydeclared that the new state must

exterminate “foreign elements,”that is, Jews and Gypsies as well asthe larger enemy, Orthodox Serbs.Budak hid nothing about his plans.“The basis for the Ustasha move-ment is religion,” announcedBudak. “For minorities such asSerbs, Jews and Gypsies, we havethree million bullets.”

Numerous NDH ministries werecontrolled or headed by Muslims.Pavelic even donned a Muslim fezto show his solidarity. Muslimswere invited to join the barbaricCroatian Peasant Party and did so insignificant numbers. When Muslimsserved in the Ustasha FirstRegiment, known as the BlackLegion, their black uniforms werethe same as their Catholic co-killers.

The Diet legislature, whichpassed a sequence of genocidaldecrees, included 11 Muslimsspecifically appointed for that pur-pose. These decrees included out-lawing Serbian and Jewish exis-tence in Croatia, the looting ofSerbian and Jewish property, and

Horrorcontinued from page 3

20 JEWISH WORLD • FEBRUARY 11-17, 2011

At Jasenovac, considered by many tobe more horrific than Auschwitz, theUstasha was known to kill Jews andSerbs by cracking their heads open

with hammers.

An Ustasha guard surrounded by victims at Jasenovac concentrationcamp.

JEWISH WORLD • FEBRUARY 11-17, 2011 21

the systematic regimentation ofSerbian and Jewish citizens intodeath camps and merciless killingfields. Catholic priests commonlyoperated the concentration camps,while in Sarajevo, most of the loot-ed and confiscated property of vic-tims went to Muslims, who racedto grab Jewish and Serbian assetsbefore their Catholic partners.

Under Croatian decrees, Jewswere compelled to wear yellowStar of David arm bands and backpatches marked with a “Z” forZidov, the Croatian word for Jew.Muslims plundered and decimatedthe Great Sephardic Synagogue inSarajevo and the centuries-old syn-agogue in Dubrovnik. WhenMuslim families were moved outof their villages near the battlelines, the Ustasha evicted Jewsfrom their homes so the CroatianMuslims could take their place.

When Jews fled the November1941 mass roundups in Sarajevo,preparatory to their planned exter-mination, a number of themescaped only by disguising them-selves as Muslims. At the sametime, many of the Jews who man-aged to survive did so with help ofmerciful neighbors in the MuslimQuarter who took them in and hidthem until they could escape.Many Muslims in Sarajevo reject-ed the Bosniak Ustasha horror andtried, in vain, to protest to their co-religionists.

Serbs, too, suffered enormous-ly. As Serbs were being forciblyconverted to Catholicism, some450 Serbian Orthodox churcheswere demolished and their reli-gious icons defiled. Orthodoxclergymen, from ordinary prieststo the Metropolitan, were grue-somely tortured and their familiesshipped to concentration campswhere they were subjected toevery inhumanity.

NDH president Pavelic declaredearly on, “This is now the Ustashaand Independent State of Croatia.It must be cleansed of all Serbs andJews. There is no room for any ofthem here. Not a stone upon astone will remain of what oncebelonged to them.” He laterassured, “The Jews will be liqui-dated within a very short time.”

To this end, more than 20Ustasha concentration camps wereestablished for the killing process,manned by combined Catholic andMuslim forces. The most notoriousof these camps was the complexknown as Jasenovac, consideredby many to be more horrific thanAuschwitz. At Jasenovac, theUstasha was known to kill Jewsand Serbs by cracking their headsopen with hammers. Women wereraped over and over, until theircaptors mutilated their bodies to

obtain souvenirs. Children weredispatched in the forest outside thecamp, where their heads werecrushed with long mallets.Sometimes they were simplythrown, alive, into flaming fur-

naces. Decapitation or dismember-ment with giant lumber saws wasalso common.

All too often, these Ustashaatrocities were not committed infits of mad rage, but for sport,

with the gleeful perpetrators smil-ing for the camera over the help-less victim waiting to be brutal-ized. NDH president Pavelic him-self once showed a journalist awicker basket filled with some 40pounds of eyeballs that were allthat remained of children slashedto pieces by the camp “sports-men.” Pavelic joked that he couldmake an oyster stew with them.

“A good Ustasha,” Pavelic toldhis troops, “is he who can use hisknife to cut a child from thewomb of its mother.”

For all their cruelty and inhu-

manity, even the Nazis wereastonished when they learned ofthe atrocities perpetrated by theCatholics and Muslims of theUstasha. Hermann Naubacher,Hitler’s personal assistant for theBalkans, called the Ustasha exter-minations “a crusade that belongsamong the most brutal mass-mur-der undertakings in the entire his-tory of the world. ... My estimateis that the number of thosedefenseless slaughtered is somethree-quarters of a million.”

Eventually, the Nazis fell. Theirallies in the Ustasha and the threeWaffen SS divisions faced post-war justice in many cases. But toomany melted into the turbulenthistory of the Cold War. TheMufti escaped to become arevered icon of the Palestinianpeople. And those in the Arab-Nazi movement went on to formthe postwar geopolitical MiddleEast that prevails in the currentcentury.

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For all their cruelty and inhumanity, even the Nazis were astonished when they learned of the atrocities perpetrated

by the Catholics and Muslims of the Ustasha.

Ante Pavelic, the Ustasha leader,meets with Hitler on June 6, 1941.