TEL AVIV – An Egyptian journalist wrote an op-ed claiming that Hitler only murdered between 100,000-600,000 Jews – and not six million – and that he was justified in doing so because Jews had seized control of Germany, spreading pornography and homosexuality as well as engineering the country’s economic collapse.
Salah Montasser’s article, published earlier in the year in the Egyptian daily Al-Masri Al-Yawm and translated this week by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), was titled “The Question that Everyone Ignores: Why Did Hitler Murder the Jews?”
Citing arguments made by “a knowledgeable German friend” of his, Montasser argues that it’s highly improbable that Hitler murdered six million Jews since Germany’s Jewish population before the war was less than a quarter of that number. “Jewish propaganda” helped fuel the six million myth, Montasser contends.
Instead, writes Montasser, the Nazis actually killed only 100,000-600,000 Jews, a “very small” number when compared with the amount of Palestinians killed by Jews. The number of Palestinians killed is estimated to be 46,000, less than half of Montasser’s figure of at least 100,000 Jewish deaths.
The “tiny minority” of Jews, writes Montasser, “managed to dominate 50% of the media, and constituted 70% of the judges.”
“They forced their presence upon the media, and in film, theater and literature. They were granted excessive dominance and promotion. While gaining this dominance they brought about most of the bank collapses between 1870 and 1920.”
Montasser continues, “They caused many financial collapses, and this is not Nazi propaganda. The Jews themselves admitted it. During this period millions of German households lost their livelihood, their savings and their investment options because of the Jewish banking gangs.”
Montasser also blames the Jews for impacting German psychology, which he calls “the most dangerous factor.”
This included introducing pornography and homosexuality into German culture and spreading prostitution and “every kind of sexual obsession and decadent art. This is a silly kind of art, now called modern art, and it was all spread and promoted by the Jews. This caused anger and outrage among German society.”
Montasser’s article drew sharp critiques from other figures in Egyptian media. Dr Abd Al-Mun’im Sa’id published a follow-up article in which he took Montasser to task for justifying what Hitler did to the Jews and reviving racist myths. Sa’id describes Montasser as a “friend who always stood beside me in times of need” and calls him a “liberal and a reformist.” As such, writes Sa’id, Montasser’s lumping of an entire group into one “monolithic unit … saying ‘the Jews said this’ or ‘the Jews did that’ contravenes the recognition that human societies contain all sorts of people.” It is impossible to draw a comparison between Albert Einstein and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, writes Sa’id.
Sa’id also deconstructs Montasser’s numbers argument, stating that the six million Jews does not refer only to German Jews, but includes all Jews in European countries occupied by the Nazis.
Dr. Osama Al-Ghazali Harb, another journalist and chairman of the board of Free Egyptians, Egypt’s largest political party, wrote another response article, saying he was “shocked” by Montasser’s claims, and fearful of the reactions they could spark among Egyptian society. He thanked Sa’id for subsequently “putting things in their rightful place.”