The Palestine Liberation Organization and Yugoslav film-makers are jointly producing an Arab-financed motion picture that portrays Palestinian Arabs as aiding the partisans in Yugoslavia during the Nazi occupation of that country in World War II, Abraham Foxman, national associate director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, said here last night.
Speaking at a community-wide Yom Ha-Shoah observance marking the 38th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Foxman said the $8 million film, titled “Death in Flames,” will have its premier at the Conference of Non-Aligned Nations in Baghdad in 1982 and will be serialized for television.
He described it as “twisting of history” and “a desecration to the memory of those who fought for freedom in Yugoslavia.” According to Foxman, “the only Palestinian who came to Yugoslavia in 1943 was Haj Amin el-Husseini, the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. And he came from Berlin in Nazi uniform to bless the newly formed SS Hanjar Division which fought against the partisans.”
Foxman said “the only Palestinians who aided the partisans were in fact Jewish Palestinians from pre-Israel Palestine.” He was referring to Hannah Senesh and others who parachuted into Yugoslavia in 1943 and joined the partisans. Senesh, on a mission to rescue Hungarian Jews, was captured by the Nazis and executed.
Foxman said that he spoke with a representative of the Yugoslav government in New York offer the ADL received information on the film. He said that in response to his protest, the Yugoslav official asked him, “How do you know that two Palestinian Arabs did not come to the aid of the Yugoslav partisans?”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
