Language:
English
Year of publication:
2015
Titel der Quelle:
American Historical Review
Angaben zur Quelle:
120,1 (2015) 140-171
Keywords:
Marcus, Hugo,
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Public opinion
;
Muslims Attitudes
;
Muslim converts from Judaism Biography
;
Jewish-Arab relations
Abstract:
Dr. Hugo Marcus (1880-1966) was a Jewish intellectual who lived in Berlin and converted to Islam in 1925. He was a prominent member of the Ahmadi community (a rival of the Sunnis) and was one of the leading Muslims in Germany. He was attracted to the community, inter alia, by its religious tolerance and its pronounced rejection of racism and antisemitism. With the Nazi rise to power, the Berlin mosque (mixed Ahmadi and Sunni) began to succumb to the Nazification of society and then to the antisemitic legislation; its publications adopted elements of Nazi racist language. In 1935 Marcus was forced to relinquish his position on the board of the German Muslim Society. In 1936 he officially severed his ties with the Jewish community; however, he was arrested after the "Kristallnacht" pogrom of 1938. He was sent to Sachsenhausen, but was soon released due to the efforts of Dr. Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah, the imam of the mosque. In 1939, with documents secured by the imam, he escaped to Switzerland. The story of the transformation of the Muslim community in Berlin in the 1930s and of Marcus's rescue attest to the fact that not all the Muslims of Germany were supporters of Nazism and antisemitism. Despite the Muslim leadership's fears and its desire to accommodate the Nazi rulers, it was ready to save its Jewish members and to dissent with the Nazis on some vital issues.
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