Tale of a German Sheikh

City Journal ^ | 22 August 2008 | Leslie S. Lebl reviewing Boualem Sansal

[Lorianne]

France’s novel of the moment links Islamism to Nazism. Boualem Sansal, Le village de l’Allemand: ou le journal des frères Schiller (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 264 pp., 2008)

While Americans and their elected officials do everything they can to avoid even the appearance of criticizing Islam or using such words as “Islamist,” the French public seems to suffer from no such inhibitions, at least not in the area of fiction. For example, it has embraced Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal’s a plainspoken masterpiece that boldly uncovers the affinities between Nazism and Islamism. In March, the novel won the RTL-Lire 2008 prize, which is awarded by a jury of 100 readers chosen by 20 bookstores throughout France. One wonders how an American readership might receive such a book.

The German is a former SS officer who serves in a number of extermination camps during World War II. After the war, he is smuggled out of Germany to Istanbul and then Cairo. From there, the Egyptian government dispatches him to Algeria during its war of independence in the 1950s. His job: to support the insurrection by training Front de Libération Nationale fighters. He subsequently settles down in a remote village, where he soon becomes the highly respected sheikh.

Sansal slowly reveals the German’s story through the eyes of his two sons. Half German and half Algerian, they are sent as boys to live in France. Their discoveries begin when the elder brother, Rachel (an amalgamation of “Rachid” and “Helmut”), returns to his native village in the mid-1990s after terrorists murder his parents. Clues among the dead sheikh’s possessions lead Rachel on an increasingly agonizing search to reconstruct his father’s life in places like Auschwitz. Devastated by what he learns about the Holocaust, the son commits suicide to atone for his father’s sins.

[JeepInMazar]

[SandRat]

Truth from history is stranger than fiction. The Muslims, The Nazis and the Mufti of Jerusalem.

[Calpernia]

ping

[Calpernia]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/816232/posts
Nazi Roots of Modern Radical Islam

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1676132/posts
Mufti and The Führer:(The Nazi/Islam Connection)

[Fred Nerks]

http://www.tellthechildrenthetruth.com/

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Nazi criminals who escaped to the Middle East:

http://www.tellthechildrenthetruth.com/where.html

[Lorianne]

Drat, I meant to only underline the Book Title.

[Admin Moderator]

Fixed it.

[Candor7]

Rachid and Helmut??? Well, by golly:

Alahua-Heil-Akbur!!!!!

[Lorianne]

Thanks!