More from Friday of old Jerusalem,
And today – A swastika flag on the Fast Hotel, (the pearl of today’s Jerusalem), 1933.
Dedicated to International Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorated last week.
Fast Hotel was established in 1891 on the lands of the Armenian patriarchy and at its initiative, in order to create an additional source of income for the church.
The 100-room building is decorated with arches and was designed by the German Templar architect Theodor Zandel.
In 1907 Abraham Fast, one of the leaders of the Templar community in the city rented the hotel.
With the occupation of the country by the British and the beginning of the mandate, it was renamed the Allenby Hotel.
At the end of the 20s of the last century, when the Fast Templar family was exiled to Egypt, and at the beginning of the 30s, a part of the hotel served as the consulate of Nazi Germany.
The Templars, about whom I wrote before, was a German religious movement whose essence was to prepare the ground for the second coming of Jesus Christ, and according to their belief, this would only happen by working hard and living in the Holy Land.
The Templars settled in the German colony in Jerusalem (and the German colony is named after them) in Haifa on Sderot Ben Gurion, in Jaffa, and in Sarona in Tel Aviv. Later, the Templars settled after the assistance of Augusta Victoria, the wife of German Emperor Wilhelm II, who, after the royal couple’s return to Germany after a tour of the Holy Land, helped the Templars’ association to purchase more land and also settle in today’s Bnei Aterot, Bethlehem of Galilee, and Moshav Alonei Abba of Today.
They contributed a lot to local agriculture with working methods and agricultural processing, and modern tools for that time.
At the same time, the power of Mufti Haj Amin Al Hosni, about whom I also wrote extensively in the past, also strengthened in Israel in the 1930s.
The same Muslim Husseini was a prominent pro-Nazi and went so far as to visit Hitler in Berlin, and pressured him to come to Israel and implement the Final Solution plan for the Jews of the Land of Israel as well.
In 1933, the Nazi flag was hung over the consulate of the Nazi regime in the Fast Hotel, the lovable Templars became less lovable and decided to identify with the Nazi ideology and regime of that time, and in the combination of the Muslim forces in the city inspired by the pro-Nazi Husseini, a Trojan horse grew in the city that threatened to cause heavy damage and destroy the Jewish population who resided in Israel at that time.
With the outbreak of World War II, members of the Fast family, like the other members of the Templar Order in Israel, were transferred to concentration camps in the Galilee, and later deported from the country, most of them to Australia.
The irony of fate was that after their departure the hotel became a club for the Australian soldiers staying in the country.
In the end, the Nazis did not reach the Land of Israel but massacred and killed about 6,000,000 of our people in Europe.
Mufti Husseini’s power was limited without the support of the Nazis and he also caused damage in the War of Independence as part of the commanders of Arab forces in Israel, but he also failed to build in Israel a machine of extermination for the Jewish people.
After the end of World War II and the immigration of Holocaust survivors to Israel, the hotel was used as housing for new immigrants, but its proximity to the border with Jordan, which controlled the old city, resulted in a weak population, the building was neglected, and after the Six Day War and the reunification of the city, it was decided to destroy the hotel.
In 1975 the hotel was destroyed.
The entrepreneurs who purchased the hotel were delayed for many years in their attempts to obtain building permits to increase the rights, but it was determined by the municipality that the new hotel that will be built will be identical in its area to the Fast Hotel that was destroyed, and it will not be allowed to be higher than the height of the old city walls.
The hotel went through a number of additional rounds, and it seems that those who put their hands on it only lost money, and a lot of it.
In 1996, the Dan chain opened the Pninat Dan Hotel instead, which was supposed to be the continuation of the King David Hotel owned by the chain, but the small number of rooms (120) and poor planning caused the chain losses and in 2000, Discont Bank put the hotel up for sale.
In 2007 the hotel was sold to Jewish French entrepreneurs, in 2008 the hotel was closed and a fight began between the new entrepreneurs for increasing rights to the hotel, and they deliberately destroyed the hotel in order not to pay property tax for an abandoned and unfit building.
After years of attempts and a firm stand by the municipality, the municipality issued a demolition order against the developers of the hotel on the grounds that the place is a nuisance and disgraces the area.
The developers submitted another plan and received approvals for it in January 2019, but they decided not to build and insisted on receiving more building rights, and on April 22 the city court accepted the municipality’s claims and ordered the demolition of the hotel.
More to come in this never-ending saga.
And another point to think about-
If the forces of the Nazi army had come to Israel, God forbid, our whole story would look different today.
And another angle to the International Holocaust Day and back to the present day-
This week we celebrated and took an active part in International Holocaust Remembrance Day in the main event held at the UN headquarters in New York and in a series of related events, the central of which was a show trial in the UN building for the Nazi criminal Prof. Ernst Rudin, who escaped from the Nuremberg trials and died in hiding in one of the South American countries.
The show trial is a social educational initiative of the Association for Excellence that educates outstanding youth for action, values, and social leadership all over the country, which we also support.
The trial was also attended by teenagers from 20 countries around the world, who studied the legal case for a year and a half accompanied by law deans at universities in Israel and served as prosecutors and as the defense team in the trial, which was broadcast live to the whole world.
The panel of judges was attended by Judge of the High Court Prof Eliakim Rubinstein, the heads of the International Court of Justice in The Hague and the European Criminal Court, the president of the Weizmann Institute, the ambassador of Israel, and many other dear and good people.
My office and I had the privilege of participating and taking an active part in the existence of the trial, which will in the future become teaching material against anti-semitism and racism in schools in the US and throughout Europe, as part of the extensive philanthropic activity we have been involved in for the past two decades.
Additional representatives from my office participated in the event in New York.
From what I said in front of the panel of judges and the UN representatives –
“Anti-Semitism in the world has not ended and is only intensifying, and the world has not learned its lesson.
In an age where news from around the globe reaches the palm of your hand in seconds, no one can claim they did not know anymore.
Anti-Semitism exists in the UN building, in the USA, and in Europe.
The educational mission of all of us is to cultivate the youth, the future generation of the country for values, leadership, independent thinking, and the ability to execute and implement decisions, in order to make the country and then the world a much better and safer place, for the sake of our children and future generations. The darkness is banished by the light, and it is our duty to light new candles wherever we can.”
I am happy and proud of the privilege of taking an active and central part in a significant event that will still have echoes around the world and in the curriculum of schools in different countries.
A Nazi flag on a hotel in the heart of Jerusalem, German Templars with a murderous ideology, a bloodthirsty mufti, and a show trial for a Nazi criminal in the UN building.
This is our Jerusalem and this is our reality.
in order to change it
Action must be taken.
Shabbat Shalom to all, far and near, from New York.
unknown photographer
