Arab Nazism: Then and Now
Charles Johnson
Mon Feb 24, 2003 at 9:45 am PST • Views: 304
An interesting piece by Michael J. Martin on the historical and ideological bonds between radical Islam and National Socialism: Arab Nazism: Then and Now.
“There were Muslims, especially in the later phases of World War II, in the service of the SS, such as those recruited in Bosnia and in the Caucasus,” explained [Omer] Bartov, who is also a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. “I believe there was an entire Waffen-SS division made primarily of Muslims in 1944,” Bartov told Front Page.
The SS indoctrinated these Muslim fighters, variously called Trawniki men, Hilfswillige, Hiwis, or Askaris, at training camps or “Ausbildungslager” in towns such as Trawniki, Poland. The Askaris, who generally hailed from the Ukraine and the Baltic states, shared with the Nazis a rapacious anti-Semitism that may have eased their transition from mediocre combat warriors to soldiers specifically trained for the ugly task of genocide.
“The Askaris were native soldiers (Muslims) in former German colonies, mostly Lithuanians, Latvians, White Russians and Ukrainians,” writes Halina Gorcewicz, a Warsaw Jew who penned an exhaustive and hard-bitten account of life in the ghetto under Nazi occupation. “Not the best of soldiers in the eyes of the Germans, the most important thing for the SS was the fact that they were great anti-Semites.”
Frank says: