Nice Work There

The U.S. Holocaust Museum (USHMM) today removed from its website the falsified biography of the Holocaust era Mufti of Jerusalem. The Museum was criticized for blurring the line between facts and opinion, and in so doing, opening the door to Holocaust denial.

The father of Palestinian nationalism, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Hussayni, was a terrorist and a Nazi collaborator, indicted at the Eichmann Trial. The Museum wrote a web biography which presented al-Hussayni as a moderate supporter of non-violence. Falsifying and omitting key facts from the historical record, including photographs of Hussayni conferring with Hitler, the Holocaust Museum attempted to exonerate him from well documented charges of Nazi collaboration. The Museum’s website stated that his “controversial…relationship with Hitler’s government…has led some to label him a Nazi collaborator and war criminal….”

Within hours of the widespread dissemination to the press and public of HMWatch's press release describing the Museum's whitewash of the Mufti, the Museum removed the article.

The Museum still does NOT have in its archives the infamous November 28, 1941 photograph of the Mufti meeting with Hitler when he obtained Hitler's assurance to exterminate the Jews of the Middle East. Nor does the Museum have a factual biography of the Mufti and his role in creating the Nazi-Palestinian alliance.

Quite Symbolic These Cracks

Cracks - just like what Galut life is all about.

More than half the concrete pillars making up Berlin's sombre Holocaust Memorial have cracked, a news report said Monday, and municipal officials said that repairs could not begin till the spring. The sea of 2,711 pillars or stelae, suggest to the visitor the vast number of Jewish lives wiped out by the Nazis.

The magazine Cicero said a check completed this month found damage in 1,361 of the stelae, up from fewer than 450 a year ago.

Designed by US architect Peter Eisenman, Germany's national monument to the Holocaust victims was completed in May 2005.

The exact cause of the cracks, some only hairline and others more than 2 millimetres across, is under dispute. The row about blame prevented work beginning before the winter to fix the damage. Cicero said the latest check was conducted by a concrete expert, Joachim Schulz, who warned that rainwater in wintertime could turn to ice in the gaps and make them worse. Some stelae might have to be completely replaced, a logistical nightmare for those at the centre.