'A universal lesson for the entire world': Arab Israeli educator stresses lasting need to teach the Holocaust

Murad Awadallah, from the Arab Israeli village of Ein Naqquba outside Jerusalem, says he once felt disconnected from the Holocaust – so much so that he viewed Yad Vashem as “a closed club of today’s elite.”

“People who came from Germany and other European countries,” he said. “We, the Arabs, did not enter the museum, because we didn’t know what it was about or what it had to do with us.”

“For me, it was an internal discourse among Jews, unrelated to me,” he added. Interestingly, he eventually became a Holocaust educator working at Yad Vashem. 

“In 2018, a friend named Nati Brooks told me there was a job tailored for me – and that it was important I start working at Yad Vashem. I asked him, ‘How am I connected? I don’t know anything about the Holocaust,’ but he said I would learn and connect. And that’s what happened,” Awadallah explained.

He eventually became an Arabic-speaking coordinator at Yad Vashem and realized that knowledge about the Holocaust was very limited among the Arab population. 

“As I immersed myself in the Holocaust, I realized there is something we Arabs do not know," Awdallah said. 

"I consider myself an informed person, aware of what is happening in the country. And suddenly I saw that we are missing something significant: I realized I live among people I do not know, and that there is something they understand, a language they speak, that I do not. We Arabs, whether we intend to or not, make mistakes and hurt those we speak with through Holocaust denial, even when that is not our intention. I understood that the Holocaust is not properly accessible to Arabs,” he explained.

Awdallah recalled that his decision to work as a Holocaust educator was met with mixed reactions in his village. While some supported it, others cut ties with him. 

“Some friends cut off contact with me as long as I work in this field, because, in their words, ‘because of the Holocaust the State of Israel was established and the Nakba happened, and to this day we are paying the price,’” he said.

Awdallah revealed that his first visit to Auschwitz transformed him as a person.

“When I started at Yad Vashem in 2018, I went to Auschwitz and then to Stutthof. When I set foot in Auschwitz for the first time, I saw darkness and blood. In Stutthof, I saw bones inside a glass case of black ash – white within black is an image that never leaves me. I will always see it.”

In 2023, Awdallah left Yad Vashem and embarked on a career as an independent entrepreneur and social influencer. Together with the Israeli director Avi Sofer, he created the documentary “Besa – A Word of Honor” about the Muslim rescue of 2000 Albanian Jews during the Holocaust. 

Awdallah’s work also addresses Holocaust denial, a phenomenon that is very widespread in the Muslim and Arab world. He revealed that he confronts this by revealing the documented meetings between the pro-Nazi Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, and Heinrich Himmler, a key architect of the Final Solution. 

“A lot of politics is attached to the connection between the mufti and the Nazis. Jews use it and Arabs use it, each for their own side. But I quote from the mufti’s own diary: he wrote that during one of his meetings with Himmler in June 1943, Himmler told him that the Germans had already managed to kill up to three million Jews – and al-Husseini had not known about it. I tell this story to Holocaust deniers.”

Awdallah emphasizes that Holocaust education is crucial in order to combat bigotry and darkness in the world. “We must learn from the past so as not to allow those who try to return us to a dark world to succeed,” he said, calling it “a universal lesson for the entire world.”

“We must cut off the ability to drag us back into dark times. We need to learn how to live together,” he continued. “Yes, there are disagreements—even my brother and I cannot agree on everything—and it is legitimate to disagree, even argue, but not violently."

He went on to stress the broader stakes: “We must eradicate racism, violent discourse and divisive rhetoric of superiority.”

“The Aryans claimed superiority over other nations,” he concluded. “We must not claim superiority or ownership over anything in comparison to others.”

Holocaust education is still limited in much of the Middle East. However, there are signs of improvement. In 2023, Arab Gulf countries that established ties with Israel decided to commemorate for the first time the Holocaust Memorial Day together with the Jewish state.