A senior Saudi religious leader was slated to make a historic visit to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland on Thursday, ahead of the 75th anniversary of its liberation by the Soviet Red Army.
Mohammed al-Issa, head of the Mecca-based Muslim World League, was set to head a delegation of Muslim religious leaders from more than 24 countries on the visit. The Arab clerics were to be accompanied by a delegation of American Jewish Committee officials.
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AJC CEO David Harris said the trip represented "the most senior delegation of Muslim religious leaders to visit Auschwitz ever."
ACJ spokesman Kenneth Bandler said that Issa, the other Muslim clerics and the AJC officials will tour the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw on Friday as well as visit the Nozyk Synagogue in the Polish capital and a local mosque. They will also share an interfaith Shabbat meal, he said.
A former Saudi justice minister, in 2018, Issa visited the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. In a subsequent opinion piece that he wrote in The Washington Post, the Saudi cleric said, "I urge all Muslims to learn the history of the Holocaust, to visit memorials and museums of this horrific event and to teach its lesson to their children."
