Egypt is located in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region: MENA refers to those states immediately west of India, including the states on the Arabian Peninsula, and the northernmost states in Africa. These states are grouped together because of their predominantly Muslim populations. The intention of this grouping is not to reify Muslim “difference” or to “orientalize” the region. Though there are clearly ethnic differences among the peoples of such a far-flung set of countries—the disparate ethnicities here include, for instance, Berbers, Arabs, Persians, and Afghans—relations between Muslims and Jews in the region have been exacerbated by the Arab-Israeli conflict. The conflict is the overriding prism through which most political leaders and at least a large portion of the citizenry view the Holocaust, if they have knowledge of it.
As Israel’s main regional rival in the 1950s and 1960s, EGYPT’s then-President Nasser several times denied the Holocaust. Most prominently in 1964, in an interview in a German magazine, he asserted that “no person, not even the simplest one, takes seriously the lie of the six million Jews that were murdered.” read more
The phenomenon certainly outlived Nasser, as the Egyptian government banned internationally renowned Holocaust films like Sophie’s Choice (1982), Schindler’s List (1993), and La vita è Bella (1997). The Egyptian Gazette argued that Schindler’s List “defended the Jewish claim so as to justify the occupation of Arab lands.” Though the liberalization brought on by the 2011 Egyptian Revolution might lead to a more open attitude toward cultural products that tell the story of the Holocaust, recent indicators do not seem promising.
RESOURCES
GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES ON HOLOCAUST EDUCATION: Trends, Patterns, and Practices, a publication of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Salzburg Global Seminar, 2013
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UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM Holocaust Encyclopedia Articles
Archival Documents
LINKS
European Holocaust Research Infrastructure
http://www.ehri-project.eu/content/egypt