Edwin Black to speak in New York on his latest book: The Farhud

By David Landis

Award-winning author and journalist Edwin Black is scheduled to speak in New York City on his latest book, The Farhud: Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust, a book that adds to his body of work which includes volumes such as Banking on Baghdad and Internal Combustion that chronicle the intertwining of petroleum in the Holocaust. The Farhud has been hailed as "monumental and exhaustively documented" by Mideast scholar Walid Phares, and "profound and insightful" by Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Black is also the author of the award-winning international bestsellers IBM and the Holocaust and War Against the Weak, the latter now a film showing in film festivals around the world.

Edwin Black is a frequent contributor to The Auto Channel and is the author of "The Plan," "Internal Combustion," "IBM and the Holocaust," "Nazi Nexus," and "Banking on Baghdad."

Sponsored by the National Association of Jewish Child Holocaust Survivors (NAHOS), Black's talk on The Farhud is scheduled for December 19 at 2 PM at the Park East Synagogue at 164 East 68th Street, New York NY. In its newsletter, NAHOS stated, "Black is a fascinating speaker and lecturer who keeps his audiences spellbound. His detailed knowledge of the topics he presents is unsurpassed." The December 19 event is also sponsored by Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, the State of California Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, Human Rights and Tolerance, Spero Forum, Jewish Virtual Library, and History Network News among others.

The Farhud was a failed Nazi-Arab attempt to completely exterminate the Jews of Baghdad June 1-2, 1941. While total extermination failed, hundreds were massacred, raped, and pillaged in the streets. In Arabic, Farhud means "violent dispossession." His book traces the centuries-long “legacy of hate.” Ultimately, tens of thousands of Arabs and Muslims fought shoulder-to- shoulder with the Nazis, from Paris to Palestine, creating three military divisions in Europe and manning concentration camps. Paratroopers, artillery brigades, espionage, infantry battalions, machine gun units, camp guards—it was all to help Hitler win the war and finish the job by exterminating the Jews in Palestine. In Yugoslavia, Arabs and Muslims comprised much of the monstrous Ustasha regime which committed the most heinous atrocities of the entire Holocaust.

The Farhud's foreward was written by Sir Martin Gilbert, the notable biographer of Winston Churchill and author of The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust.

Black's book explains that Arabs refused to co-exist with Jews as equals in Palestine. So a broad spectrum of Arabs and Muslims partnered with the Nazis to defeat the British, who had the League of Nations Mandate over Palestine, and to facilitate the utter extermination of all Jews everywhere. The June 1941 Farhud pogrom was the culmination of a “legacy of hate,” writes Black, and, like the Kristallnacht in Germany, was one horrific murder spree in a massive program of genocide.

Chief among the leaders of ther alliance was the infamous Mufti of Jerusalem. But this movement was more than a single Mufti or even one political party, says Black. One Arab survey of the day found that 81 percent of all Arabs favored the Nazis. Indeed, Arab and Muslim communities partnered with the Nazis on every level, from Persia to Palestine to Poland to Paris.

In his Introduction to The Farhud, Black wrote, "This book is a nightmare. I regret anyone must read it. I regret it was necessary to write. I regret that I was the one who had to write it. I hope it never becomes necessary to write another like this one. Perhaps that is why I labored ten hours per day for more than a year to document The Farhud and the roots of the Arab-Nazi alliance in the Holocaust—that is, the truth about what happened and why."

In commenting on the impact his book will have, Black says, "Admittedly, the book is a nightmare to read. Every chance I get I remind people that I am writing about the 20th Century, not the 21st. I refuse to be drawn into contemporary polemics or polarization. Nor do I wish one word of what I write to be used as a pretext against any of our neighbors. But as a historian, I cannot stand down from the truth. We will never achieve peace until we can look back and confront the past honestly, in context, and use that legacy of hate to begin a new push for a future of peace.

The Farhud: Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance During the Holocaust (Dialog 2010). Buy it here