Gideon Hausner, the chief prosecutor in the Adolf Eichmann trial, disclosed today what he said was an 18-year-old letter by Anwar Sadat, now President of Egypt, saluting Hitler for his leadership of Germany in World War II. Hausner, who was Israel’s Attorney General from 1960 to 1963 and is a Knesset member representing the Independent Liberals, read the letter to the 2,000 delegates to the assembly of the United Synagogue of America.
According to Hausner, some Egyptian personalities were approached by an Egyptian newspaper to write a hypothetical letter to Hitler, if indeed he were alive and residing in South America as then rumored. On Sept. 18, 1953, Anwar Sadat, then a rising officer in the Egyptian Army, provided the following reply:
“‘Dear Hitler: I salute you from the depths of my heart. Though you have apparently lost your war, you are the real winner, for you succeeded in breaking the lines between Churchill and his accomplices. True, you have made a few mistakes by fighting on too many fronts, but you have become an eternal leader of Germany and no one ought to be surprised if you will rise to power again or if the world will see another great Hitler.'”
Of the letter by Sadat, Hausner said: “Those are the beliefs of the adversary with whom we are dealing.” Hausner also serves as chairman of the Yad Vashem, the memorial to the Jewish martyrs of World War II.
(In New York, a spokesman for the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith said the letter cited by Hausner was unknown to him but that the ADL had a file documenting anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi actions and statements by Sadat over the years. The spokesman cited reviews of Sadat’s 1957 book, “Revolt on the Nile,” quoting him as recalling that “(we) acted in complete harmony with them (the Nazis)” and “we were prepared to fight side by side with the Axis to hasten England’s defeat.” In November 1942, Sadat was dismissed from the Egyptian Army on charges of collusion with the Nazis.)
Hausner also warned the Soviet Union that “no Soviet personality will henceforth be able to venture into a foreign country without being confronted there with the demand for justice for Soviet Jews.” The Israeli lawyer praised the “miraculous rebirth of Jewish identity” in the USSR, singling out Soviet Jewish youth for their willingness to “go to all lengths and burn their bridges behind them in the battle for the right to live as Jews in the country of their choice–Israel.”
The convention adopted a resolution urging the State Department to “speedily reconsider its present decision to withhold the shipment of Phantom aircraft,” and charged that current US policy encourages Egypt “to presume that aggressive action may be timely.”
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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.
