A new documentary that explores Arab efforts to save Jews from the Holocaust opened to a packed house at the Museum of Tolerance in LA this week. The film, Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust in Arab Lands, is based on a book by Dr. Robert Satloff, a historian and executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Concerned that there were no Arabs listed as the "righteous among the nations"--gentiles who risked their own lives to save Jews from the Holocaust, as determined by Israel's official Holocaust memorial and museum, Yad Vashem--Satloff set out to discover if there were in fact any "Arab Schindlers". In the wake of 9/11, his goal was to improve Arab/Jewish relations and change Arab views of the Holocaust. The film will be shown on PBS on April 12, Holocaust Remembrance Day. It was funded by Jewish and Muslim donors.
Conducting much of his research in Morocco, Satloff discovered from accounts of Jewish survivors and descendants of Arab rescuers, that in fact many Jews were saved by Arab sympathizers from the concentration camps set up by the Nazis in North Africa. At the MOTLA screening last week, Satloff expressed disappointment that Yad Vashem had rejected a man featured in the documentary, Khaled Abdul Wahab, as one of the righteous. Wahab, a Tunisian landowner, misdirected German soldiers away from Jews he hid on his estate. Satloff believes that political issues within Yad Vashem led to Wahab’s rejection, and expressed hope that further research would lead to the honoring of Wahab and others.
Although I haven’t seen the film yet, it strikes me as an important attempt to take the Holocaust out of its politically-charged context in Mideast relations. The Holocaust of course is seen as a loaded subject by some Arabs, who believe it is a continuing basis for the occupation of the Palestinian territories and helps to legitimate Israeli military action against its Arab neighbors. Regardless of whether that view is accurate, it’s undoubtedly part of the stubborn Holocaust-denial among some Arabs.
Likewise, the discovery that there were prominent Arabs who helped Jews escape the concentration camps might be politically unpopular among Israeli hard-liners who would prefer to continue portraying Arabs as historically hostile and even anti-Semitic. One film doesn’t have the power to change entrenched positions, but perhaps among the open-minded, the film can provide a new perspective in Arab-Jewish relations.