A few years ago I posted about Robert Satloff and his book Among the Righteous, which provided a welcome reminder that there was more to the story of Muslims and the Holocaust than Haj Amin al-Husseini.
Now PBS has produced an hour-long program based on Satloff’s book, which you can view here.
I wondered if Satloff’s book had got any attention at all in the Arab or Muslim media. The PBS program shows him being interviewed on Arab television, so that’s encouraging.
Satloff hopes that reminding Muslims and Jews of heroic actions by Muslims to save Jews during World War II will promote greater understanding and sympathy between the two peoples. I hope so too, but it’s an uphill struggle. As I wrote:
To acknowledge Arab and Muslim heroism during the Holocaust would be to acknowledge the fact of the Holocaust–- which, I suspect, for many Arabs is just one step away from acknowledging the legitimacy of the State of Israel. So we have the strange phenomenon of a Jewish author (Satloff) who is more eager to recognize the humanity and decency of Arabs toward Jews than are many Arabs themselves.
And unfortunately, despite the evidence discovered by Satloff, the Israeli Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem has yet to recognize an Arab Muslim as one of the Righteous Among the Nations.
