JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Recognizing the Holocaust in Arabia

By Uriel Heilman · June 9, 2009

For all the Holocaust denying and minimizing in the Arab world, there is one leader in the Arab world who speaks out unabashedly about the horrors of the Holocaust, writes the chairman of the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad, in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

The leader of an Arab Muslim nation recently made some remarkable statements about the Holocaust - remarkable for their courage and respect for historical truth. In a largely unreported speech at the Royal Palace in Fez, Morocco's King Mohammed VI called the Holocaust "one of the blots, one of the most tragic chapters in modern history." The king added, "Amnesia has no bearing on my perception of the Holocaust, or on that of my people."

The remarks offer a stark contrast to the willful amnesia now commonplace in parts of the Muslim world, where denial and distortion of the Holocaust have become widespread...

In a few places in the Islamic world, there is now a willingness to look truthfully at the past and comprehend what befell European Jewry more than six decades ago. Last year, the predominantly Muslim European nation of Albania commemorated its first Holocaust Remembrance Day. And now King Mohammed has shown real leadership by publicly acknowledging the Holocaust. He should be emulated as well as applauded.

Full column here.