Yesterday, with Claire Berlinski, we heard about the Nazi influence in Iran. It was a significant factor also, of course, in the Arab world.
Alois Brunner (SS-Hauptsturmführer, Adolf Eichmann’s right-hand man, and the “Butcher of Salonica” who personally deported ~128,000 Jews to death camps and ran the Drancy camp) was welcomed to Syria where he trained security forces in Gestapo torture and interrogation methods and helped build the regime’s repressive apparatus that targeted Jews and political enemies. He lived comfortably in Damascus for three decades as a free man.
Leopold Gleim (Gestapo chief in Warsaw and head of Jewish Affairs in occupied Poland) was welcomed to Egypt where he converted to Islam and then organized Egypt’s secret police and internal security in the Nazi model and was also directly involved in pogroms against Egyptian Jews.
Bernhard Bender (Gestapo special section chief for clandestine Jewish movements and deportations in Poland and the Soviet Union) was welcomed to Egypt where he worked in Egyptian security services’ political prisoners section and helped craft anti-Jewish policies and strategy while also contributing to repression and later the expulsion of Jews from Arab lands.
Otto Skorzeny (SS-Obersturmbannführer and Hitler’s favorite commando leader) was welcomed to Egypt where he acted as a military advisor directly to President Nasser and helped build Egypt’s intelligence and special forces. He even helped train Palestinian Arab fedayeen terrorists in sabotage and guerrilla tactics.
And not forgetting Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem during the 1920s and 1930s, who spent much of WW2 in Berlin:
With the rise of Nazi Germany, al-Husseini became a devoted supporter and ally of Adolf Hitler. His aim was not simply to send Jews back to Europe, but to bring the Nazi Holocaust to the Middle East….
While al-Husseini is only a marginal figure in the history of the Nazi Holocaust, he was among the most important Nazi propagandists in the Arab world. During the 1930s and 1940s, he played a major role in developing the modern Islamist movement, and in embedding anti-Semitism as a cornerstone of postcolonial Arab identity.
After the defeat of the Axis powers in 1945, al-Husseini was detained in France before escaping to Egypt in 1946. Well after the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps had been publicly exposed, and while the Nuremberg war-crimes trials (which al-Husseini was arguably trying to evade) were still ongoing, Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, welcomed al-Husseini to Egypt. Al-Banna described al-Husseini as a ‘hero who challenged an empire and fought Zionism’. ‘Germany and Hitler are gone, but Amin al-Husseini will continue the struggle’, he added.:
Mick Hartley 
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