In Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to the 37th Zionist Congress, on Tuesday, he suggested that Adolf Hitler did not intend on exterminating the Jewish people and only wanted to expel them from Germany. He put the blame on Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem at the time.
Netanyahu said in his speech that Haj Amin al-Husseini, "...was later sought for war crimes in the Nuremberg trials because he had a central role in fomenting the final solution. He flew to Berlin. Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews. And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, 'If you expel them, they'll all come here.' 'So what should I do with them?' he asked. He said, 'Burn them.' And he was sought in, during the Nuremberg trials for prosecution."
Al-Husseini was later investigated at the Nuremberg trials for his role in Hitler's final solution.
"The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of [Adolf] Eichmann and [Heinrich] Himmler in the execution of this plan," Dieter Wisliceny testified during the Nuremberg trials. "He was one of Eichmann's best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures..."
Though the international community does not deny that al-Husseini played this role in Hitler's final solution, German Chancellor Angela Merkel didn't agree with Netanyahu's comments, notes BBC News. Germany "abides by its responsibility for the Holocaust... We are very clear in our minds about the Nazi's responsibility for the break with civilisation that was the Shoah."
Holocaust scholars have not confirmed al-Husseini's role in Hitler's motivation to exterminate Europe's Jewish population rather than expel them.