Holocaust, 'Righteous Arabs,' and N.Y. Mosque: Filmmaker's Message For Troubled Time

A commission of the Holocaust Museum in Israel, Yad Vashem, is deciding whether to list a Tunisian man as the first Arab to be named one of the "Righteous Among the Nations" -- the designation given to the few non-Jews who risked everything during the Holocaust to save Jews from death.

Oskar Schindler of "Schindler's List" fame would be one of the most recognizable of the Righteous, and Yad Vashem's Commission on the Righteous has listed 22,000 others from 44 nations. None of them Arabs -- yet.

Khaled Abdul Wahab could be the first. He was a Tunisian who braved retribution from the Nazis to hide two Jewish families on his farm. In 2007, Abdul Wahab, who died a decade ago, was nominated for designation as one of the Righteous, thanks to stories published in a 2006 book, "Among the Righteous," by Robert Satloff. It sought to answer a basic question: Did any Arabs save Jews during the Holocaust?

Satloff, head of the Washington Institute, a Beltway think tank that seeks policy alternatives to promote peace in the Middle East, in fact found numerous stories of Arab rescuers that had been lost to history, politics, and prejudice. The story of Khaled Abdul Wahab was one of them, but Abdul Wahab's nomination was still rejected by the Yad Vashem commission in 2009.

Now, however, Wahab's nomination has been resubmitted and has a chance of acceptance, a historic landmark that would come just as Middle East peace talks are being revived and as tensions over a proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero raise questions about religious freedom and the place of Muslims in American society.

If Wahab's nomination is approved, it would be due to Satloff's ongoing efforts to unearth more evidence about Arab rescuers, and to publicity surrounding the PBS documentary version of "Among the Righteous," which was broadcast in April.

Satloff spoke to Politics Daily about the film, the history of Arab rescuers, and the message these stories have for today's world.

Politics Daily: What was the genesis of this project?

Robert Satloff: It really was born on 9/11. I know it sounds quite trite, but I tell the story in my book about being in Manhattan on 9/11 and going through this process of replaying the visuals of what happened that day over in my mind time and time again. And the event just morphed in my imagination -- the smoke, the ash, the burning towers just morphed to the chimneys of Auschwitz, and the smoke and ash.

That started me thinking about the relationship between the two perpetrators [the terrorists on 9/11 and the Nazis during the Holocaust]. Obviously there are great differences. But there are some links, as both were people keen to use the greatest technology of the day to kill as many people as efficiently as possible. So I began to think about the culture that they came from.

I'm not naive enough to think that if Mohammad Atta [leader of the plotters] had learned about the Holocaust he would not have undertaken the events of 9/11. But I was much more interested in the society the perpetrators came from, and what they knew about the Holocaust. And that started me off on a research project to understand what was taught about the Holocaust and genocide in Muslim and Arab societies.

PD: What did you find?

RS: Not surprisingly, I came across a whole spectrum of types of Holocaust denial in various Arab societies, and I decided that perhaps my modest contribution to responding to 9/11 would be to address the problem of Holocaust denial. And the question became, how?

So I decided to ask a different question. And that question is: Did any Arabs save any Jews? If the answer is yes, then there's a window through which one can have a different sort of discussion about the Holocaust with Arabs. If the answer is yes, then people have to recognize there was a reason for those people to be saved. If you are proud about the rescuer, then you have to accept the rationale for the rescue.

That could lead into what I thought would be a more fruitful and positive discussion, rather than the traditional and more antagonistic discussions.

PD: Have you found that to be the case?

RS: I have done lot of speaking over the years to Arab audiences in Arab countries, and I have found that it is certainly constructive and a door opening to having the conversation. It's disarming in some respects. I'm quite candid about my findings; I don't try to sugarcoat the reality here -- the reality being that Arabs played the broad variety of roles that one might expect in the Nazi and Vichy persecution of Jews in Arab countries: collaborators, bystanders and rescuers. All these stories need to be told but the latter [the rescuers], I believe, had the power to open minds.

What I have found more generally is that if you tell the story in its fullness and complexity and its candor, then you can have a full and complex and candid discussion -- which is what people want, at least people of good will. My goal is not to change the minds of deniers. Deniers are denying because it's a conscious choice. My goal is to address people's ignorance, which is the more common characteristic.


PD: It seems as though your project, and even the debates and disagreements, would serve your goal of humanizing Jews and each other.

RS: Exactly, there's a humanizing aspect. I want to legitimize conversations about this topic, to make it something one can have without having it reduced to debates about the Arab-Israeli conflict.

PD: Today, rather than classic Holocaust denial, it seems you also have some Arabs, especially Palestinians, embracing the notion of genocide or Holocaust in order to apply it to themselves.

RS: Holocaust denial is a catchall term that we use to refer to lots of different things. Sometimes it's traditional denial: "It didn't happen." Other times it's the exact opposite, which is not only did it happen, but it was good: "We only wish that Hitler had finished the job." We tend to call that denial, but it's really glorification.

Then you find what I call relativism: "Bad things happen. Bad things happened to Jews, bad things happened to Palestinians, bad things happened to Cambodians, bad things happened to Rwandans, or bad things just happen in war." In this view, the numbers don't matter, the intent doesn't matter, the severity doesn't matter. Bad things just happen.

Then there's the variation you mentioned, which is that Jews have their Holocaust, Palestinians have their Nakba [the flight of Palestinians from Israel in 1948], and every group has their grievance, which is a form of relativism. There's a reason why genocide is genocide and not a regrettable effect of war or political conflict. Genocide is a purposeful attempt to annihilate a people. To reduce that to something bad that happens in war is a form of denial.

PD: Why have these stories of Arab rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust been hidden? Why haven't they been known until now?

RS: There are two basic answers and they reinforce each other: One is that we -- we being the West, historians, Jews, Israelis -- we didn't look that hard. We didn't focus on this entire chapter of the Holocaust. The Holocaust is traditionally a European experience. And the Arab-Israeli conflict even made it more unlikely we would look at the possibility that Arabs helped Jews.

The other answer is that they -- the Arabs -- didn't want to be found. They certainly didn't want to be found if they were persecutors. But even the heroes didn't want to be found, mostly because of politics. At some point over the last 60 years it became toxic to be an Arab who saved a Jew. It became politically unpalatable to have done that humane deed during the Holocaust.

There are quite a few stories I came across of children or grandchildren of heroes who just didn't want to talk about this because of the political context.

PD: Do you get any negative reaction from Jews when they hear of these stories?

RS: I've gotten reaction all across the board. By and large, it's been quite positive. I've been overwhelmed. At the same time, there are some fairly fringe groups that like the first half of my book, where I tell of the persecution of Jews in Arab lands, but don't really like the second half, where I tell the stories of Arabs who assisted Jews in escaping persecution. By the same token, I have some people who like the second half and don't like the first half! There's something in there for everybody.

PD: To bring the discussion up to contemporary times, since the genesis of this project was the 9/11 attack, what is your take on the controversial Islamic center proposed for Lower Manhattan near Ground Zero?

RS: I hope it's not too much of a cop-out if I say the most important question really has to do with the 9/11 memorial itself. I am much less concerned with the question of the mosque than I am with the clarity about what appears at the 9/11 site itself. Specifically, is this going to be a place merely where 3,000 people died, where terrorism occurred? Or are we quite clear that this is a place where deviants in the name of Islam murdered people, and murdered people from every religion and faith and creed and nationality, and triggered revulsion at both their ideas and their methods around the world?

In my professional career, I am focused on how we counter radicalization. So I think that the most important question is how we remember that day, and how we remember it for posterity.

PD: What is your general sense of Arab relations with the West, with Jews today?

RS: There is a contest, a real contest going on inside Muslims societies. The real issue is not relations between Jews and Muslims, or Jews and Christians and Muslims. It is relations between mainstream Jews, Christians and Muslims against radical Islamic extremists who pose a threat to all three of those groups. I think that initiatives like mine are ways to build links among people of good will in order to isolate and undermine extremists. I think there is a great potential to do this, a great potential to amplify the voices of Muslims who are opposed to radical extremism, and not to let certain grievances dominate the discussion.

PD: It sounds like a replay of the struggle during the Holocaust that your book and documentary cover.

RS: I certainly don't want to exaggerate the potential. Believe me, I am very honest about the ability of these things [books and films] to have a wide effect. But I do believe that over time these things matter. The major goal of the pursuit of the Arab Righteous [i.e., Arabs who rescued Jews] is to strip away a lot of the garbage from the discussion in the Middle East so people can talk about real issues and not fake issues. Holocaust denial just creates distractions that demand time, energy and attention to address. I think initiatives such as mine can sweep away some of the distraction and let real people talk about the real issues that matter.

One could spend a lot of effort to put a stake through the heart of a fake claim, but sometimes that's what you've got to do.

PD: Are you optimistic about the prospect of Yad Vashem approving Khaled Abdul Wahab as one of the Righteous?

RS: Up until now, Yad Vashem has not recognized any of the Arabs as being righteous. But there is new testimony that has emerged as result of the film, new first-hand testimony that has emerged about Khaled Abdul Wahab and I am quite hopeful this will help bring about the recognition of the first Arab Righteous.

PD: I assume you'd support that outcome?

RS: It's not just my view. I think there's great evidence to merit that. What I'm especially happy about is that this documentary triggered more people to come forward. At a premiere in Los Angeles an elderly woman in the front row stood up during the question and answer period and asked for the microphone. She had tears in her eyes and she said, "It's all true, I was there. That's me." She was one of the people on the farm who was protected by Khaled Abdul Wahab. It was very moving.