MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (AP/WMOT) -- A speaker at this week’s Holocaust Conference in Murfreesboro is calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s suggestion that a Palestinian convinced Hitler to exterminate Europe’s Jews, “nonsense.”
World War II scholar Gerhard Weinberg was a guest lecturer at Middle Tennessee State’s 12th biennial Holocaust Studies Conference. He told MTSU’s Gina Logue the holocaust was already well underway when the Palestinian leader in question visited Hitler.
“By the time Hitler met the Grand Mufti in November of 1941 somewhere between 300,000 and 800,000 Jews had already been killed. What happened at their meeting was that Hitler explained to the Haj Amin al-Husseini was the German Army’s role when they moved into the Middle East as they were trying to at that time.”
Netanyahu told a group of Jewish leaders on Tuesday that it was the Mufti of Jerusalem who convinced Hitler to destroy the Jews. Holocaust experts slammed the comments as historically inaccurate. Critics say the statement amounts to incitement against modern-day Palestinians.