Johann von Leers

Johann von Leers, alias Omar Amin, (January 25, 1902 – March 5, 1965) was a German professor known for his anti-Jewish polemics. He was one of the most important ideologues of the Third Reich and later served in the Egyptian Information Department. He published for Goebbels', in Peron's Argentina, and for Nasser's Egypt.

Biography [Description of Kurt P. Tauber, Beyond Eagle and Swastika; German Nationalism since 1945, Middletown, CT Wesleyan University Press, 1967, II, 1115]

Born in Vietlübbe, Mecklenburg-Schwerin. He was involved in the Free Corps. He joined the NSDAP in 1929. He wrote the notorious anti-Semitic tract (published and popular during the Third Reich), "Juden Sehen Dich An" (Jews are Observing You). He was fluent in five languages, including Hebrew and Japanese.

In 1945 he fled to Italy, living there for five years, and then moving to Argentina in 1950. Five years thereafter he moved from Argentina to Egypt.

Jeffrey Herf reports that in December 1942, von Leers published an article in "Die Judenfrage", a journal which belonged to the anti-Semitic intellectual world, entitled "Judaism and Islam as Opposites." As the title indicates, the author's perspective is Hegelian, presenting Judaism and Islam in terms of thesis and antithesis. This essay also reveals the ingratiating National Socialist perspective which von Leers projected on the Islamic past as well as the intensity of his hatred for Judaism and Jewry. The following passage is part of the original text :« Mohammed's hostility to the Jews had one result: Oriental Jewry was completely paralyzed. Its backbone was broken. Oriental Jewry effectively did not participate in [European] Jewry's tremendous rise to power in the last two centuries. Despised in the filthy lanes of the mellah (the walled Jewish quarter of a Moroccan city, analogous to the European ghetto) the Jews vegetated there. They lived under a special law (that of a protected minority), which in contrast to Europe did not permit usury or even traffic in stolen goods, but kept them in a state of oppression and anxiety. If the rest of the world had adopted a similar policy, we would not have a Jewish Question (Judenfrage).... As a religion, Islam indeed performed an eternal service to the world: it prevented the threatened conquest of Arabia by the Jews and vanquished the horrible teaching of Jehovah by a pure religion, which at that time opened the way to a higher culture for numerous peoples ....» ["Judentum und Islam als Gegensaetze," Die Judenfrage, Vol. 6, No. 24 (15 December 1942), p. 278, quoted and paraphrased by Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy, p.181]

= In Nasser's Egypt=

Leers became the political adviser to the Information Department under Muhammad Naguib. He continued to specialize in anti-Semitism, managing anti-Israel propaganda. He converted to Islam, and changed his name to Omar Amin. He was a close friend of Muhammad Amin Al-Husayni [Patrice Chairoff, "Dossier néo-nazisme", Ramsay, 1977, p. 450] .In its first decade, the West German government tried in vain to have him extradited for war crimes. He died in Cairo in 1965.

Notes

References

* Philip Rees, "Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890",1991, ISBN 0-13-089301-3
* Martin A. Lee, "The Beast Reawakens", 1997, ISBN 0-316-51959-6
* Irving Sedar and Harold J. Greenberg, "Behind the Egyptian Sphinx: Nasser's strange bedfellows; prelude to World War III?", Philadelphia, Chilton Co., 1960