A Swastika Flag on Hotel Fast (Present-Day Dan Pearl Hotel, Jerusalem), 1933
Another “Once Upon a Time in Jerusalem” in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Hotel Fast was established in 1891 on land owned by the Armenian Patriarchate, in order to generate additional income for the church.
The 100-room building was decorated with arches and designed by the German Templar architect Theodor Sandel.
In 1907, the hotel was leased by Abraham Fast, one of the leaders of the Templar community in the city.
With the British conquest of the land and the beginning of the Mandate period, its name was changed to the Allenby Hotel.
In the late 1920s, the Fast Templar family returned from exile in Egypt, and in the early 1930s, part of the hotel served as the consulate of Nazi Germany.
The Templars, whom I’ve written about before, were a German religious movement whose essence was to prepare the land for the second coming of Jesus. According to their belief, this would only happen through hard work and living in the Holy Land.
The Templars settled in the German Colony of Jerusalem (which is named after them), in Haifa along Ben Gurion Boulevard, in Jaffa, and in Sarona in Tel Aviv. Later, with assistance from Augusta Victoria, wife of German Kaiser Wilhelm II (after the royal couple’s return to Germany from a tour of the Holy Land), the Templar association was helped to purchase more land and settle also in what is now Bnei Atarot, Bethlehem of Galilee, and Alonim.
They contributed greatly to local agriculture through advanced farming methods and the use of modern tools for the time.
Simultaneously, in the 1930s, the power of the vile Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini grew. I’ve written extensively about him in the past as well.
Al-Husseini was a prominent pro-Nazi Muslim figure, who even went so far as to visit Hitler in Berlin, urging him to come to the Land of Israel and implement the Final Solution on the Jews there as well.
In 1933, the Nazi flag was hung on the consulate of the Nazi regime inside the Fast Hotel. The once-beloved Templars became much less so, aligning themselves with the Nazi ideology and regime. In conjunction with the pro-Nazi Muslim forces in the city, inspired by al-Husseini, a Trojan horse began to grow in the city—one that posed a severe threat to the Jewish population in the land at that time.
With the outbreak of World War II, the Fast family, like the rest of the Templar Order members in the country, were transferred to internment camps in the Galilee and later deported from the land—most of them to Australia.
Ironically, after their departure, the hotel was used as a club for Australian soldiers stationed in the area.
In the end, the Nazis did not reach the Land of Israel, but they did massacre and murder approximately 6,000,000 of our people in Europe.
Al-Husseini’s power was limited without Nazi support. He also inflicted damage during the War of Independence as one of the commanders of Arab forces in the land, but even he failed to build a Jewish extermination machine here.
After World War II ended and Holocaust survivors arrived in Israel, the hotel served as housing for new immigrants. However, its proximity to the border with Jordan (which controlled the Old City at the time) brought a vulnerable population to the area. The building was neglected, and after the Six-Day War and Jerusalem’s reunification, it was decided to demolish the hotel.
In 1975, the hotel was demolished.
The developers who bought the hotel spent many years trying to obtain construction permits to increase its size. However, the municipality ruled that any new hotel built on the site would be the same size as the original Fast Hotel, with no additional height allowed above the height of the Old City walls.
The hotel changed hands several times, and it seems that whoever took it over only lost money—and a lot of it.
In 1996, the Dan Hotels chain opened the Dan Pearl Hotel on the site. It was intended as a continuation of the King David Hotel, which the chain owns.
However, the small number of rooms (120) and poor planning led to losses, and in 2000, Discount Bank put the hotel up for sale.
In 2007, it was sold to Jewish French entrepreneurs. In 2008, the hotel was closed, and the new developers began a battle to increase building rights.
They intentionally damaged the hotel to avoid paying property taxes on an abandoned, uninhabitable structure.
After years of legal disputes and firm resistance from the municipality, the city issued a demolition order on the hotel, claiming it was a nuisance and an eyesore.
The developers submitted another plan and received permits for it in January 2019. However, they chose not to build, continuing to demand additional building rights. In April 2022, the city court accepted the municipality’s claims and ordered the hotel’s demolition.
On May 19th of this year, the local committee approved the demolition of the hotel and the construction of a new one in its place.
To be continued in this never-ending saga…
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One more thought-provoking point: Had the Nazi army reached the Land of Israel, heaven forbid, our story would look very different today.
This Holocaust Remembrance Day is especially difficult given that the slogan “Never Again” seems out of touch with the current reality of a sovereign Jewish state and 59 of our brethren still languishing in Hamas tunnels—today’s al-Husseini.
Shabbat Shalom to near and far from Jerusalem.
Let us remember and teach the lessons of the Holocaust for future generations—and do everything we can now to save our brothers and sisters today, because there is still time to change the history that is being written as we speak—and to correct it.
Photographer: Zvi Oron, the Zionist Archive
Colorization: Tamar Yardeny
