Before the war, and still in the early stages thereof, the Germans had seriously considered as a solution the settling of European Jews on the island of Madagascar. In doing so they were taking up an idea that had been studied in 1937 by the Polish, French and British authorities, and even by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, but, with the intensification of the conflict, they had to abandon that idea. As for the settling of European Jews in Palestine, they had ended up firmly opposing it. As late as in January 1944, during talks with the British, the German foreign office stated that, if the British would in fact agree to take in a convoy of 5,000 Jews comprised of children (85%) and accompanying adults (15%), it could only be on condition of accepting them definitively and of prohibiting their subsequent emigration to Palestine: The Government of the Reich cannot take part in a maneuver aimed at allowing the Jews to chase the noble and valiant Palestinian people from their mother country, Palestine. These talks can continue only on condition that the British Government declare its readiness to accommodate the Jews in Great Britain and not in Palestine, and that it guarantee them the possibility to settle there definitively (reminder from von Thadden, of the German foreign office's Gruppe Inland II, Berlin, 29 April, 1944; document catalogued by the Allies under the number NG-1794 and reproduced in French by Henri Monneray, former assistant in the French delegation's office of prosecution at the Nuremberg trial, in his work La Persécution des juifs dans les Pays de l'Est, assemblage of documents, Paris, Editions du Centre [i.e., the Centre de documentation juive contemporaine], 1949, p. 169-170).
On January 18, 1945 Heinrich Himmler wrote in a personal note made after a meeting with Swiss president Jean-Marie Lusy, who served as intermediary with the Americans:
Once again I more precisely stated to him my view [on the Jews]. We put our Jews to work, including, of course, in heavy labor, such as road and canal construction, in mining operations, and as a result there has been a high death rate. Since negotiations began about improving the lot of the Jews, they have been assigned to normal work, although naturally they have to work, just like Germans, in the armaments industry. Our point of view on the Jewish question is this: we are not at all interested in the position taken by America and England regarding the Jews. One thing is clear: based on our decades of experience with them since the [first] world war, we do not want them in Germany or in the German living space, and in this matter we will not allow any discussion. If America wants them, we welcome that. It is not to be permitted — and for this a guarantee must be given — that the Jews whom we let out by way of Switzerland ever be transferred to Palestine. We know that the Arabs reject the Jews just as much as we Germans do and we will not permit the indecency [Unanständigkeit] of sending still more Jews to that poor nation already tormented by the Jews (original document, with Himmler's hand-written annotations, as reproduced by Werner Maser, Nürnberg, Tribunal der Sieger, Droemer Knaur, Munich-Zurich, 1979, p. 262-263).
In their common war against, on the one hand, the British and, on the other hand, Soviet communism, Adolf Hitler and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin Al Husseini, were allies. SS formations, such as the "Handschar" (scimitar) and "Skanderbeg" (the Albanian national hero) divisions, were either largely or wholly made up of Moslems and in various spots in Europe, beginning with France, Arabs had rallied to the German cause. In Iraq, Rashid Ali and, in India, Subhas Chandra Bose, founder of the Indian National Army, had also taken sides with Germany and against Britain.
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Originally Posted by Big War Bird
ing lending money.
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