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London, Tuesday, July 11, 2000
The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering by Victor Sebestyen
He argues that the pursuit of reparations from Swiss banks and German industrialists for survivors of the death camps is "an outright extortion racket" which will result in an increase of anti-semitism in Europe and America; that the majority of people who claim to have survived the concentration camps are fakes, and that it is time to call a halt to building new Holocaust memorials and museums, such as the exhibition opened by the Queen at the Imperial War Museum last month.
Yet it is hard to level against Finkelstein one of the vilest charges that can be made against anybody in a liberal democracy: Holocaust denial. His father and mother were survivors of the Warsaw ghetto and Nazi death camps and all the rest of their family were exterminated at Treblinka. He is a product of the Holocaust, which, he claims, is why he is battling against its use "not to remember Jewish martyrdom, but for the purposes of Jewish aggrandizement". Finkelstein's tone is often angry and scathing. Sometimes he over-states his case or uses language so far removed from normal academic discourse that some might be tempted to doubt his credentials. But he deserves to be heard, and not only because of his background. He is making some profound points that many younger and more thoughtful Jews have quietly been attempting to debate, but whose voices have been stilled by the establishment, particularly in the US.
It was only after the Six-Day War in 1967 that the Holocaust "industry" began to boom. "I sometimes think that the worst thing that ever happened to the Nazi Holocaust was that American Jewry discovered it." This "discovery", insists Finkelstein, had nothing to do with fear for the survival of Israel, which after all had spectacularly smashed its enemies in under a week and occupied land along its borders seven times its own size.
"The Holocaust has proven to be an indispensable ideological weapon. Through its deployment, one of the world's most formidable powers, with a horrendous human rights record, has cast itself as a 'victim state' and the most influential 'ethnic group' in the US has likewise acquired victim status. "Considerable dividends accrue from this specious victimhood -- in particular immunity to criticism, however justified. Those enjoying this immunity have not escaped the moral corruptions that typically attend it."
The uniqueness claim also gives Jews an undeserved "sovereignty over suffering" and Hitler a place in demonology categorically different from Stalin, Mao Tse Tung or Pol Pot. This political correctness has become so extreme on some campuses that to compare the Nazi death camps with an atrocity such as the slaughter of 10 million Africans in the Congo as a result of the Belgian ivory and rubber trade, is met with accusations of Holocaust denial.
Thousands of others falsely claim
to be survivors of death camps, claims Finkelstein.
Picture:
Abraham Foxman (ADL)
Finkelstein says little of the money will ever be seen by victims; like much of the $12billion compensation paid by Germany over the past 50 years, Jewish organisations will use it to open more museums and set up more departments of Holocaust studies at universities. In the US, maintains Finkelstein, the Holocaust is "taught" at schools and colleges in far greater depth than the Civil War, the defining moment of US history. The pursuit now of compensation from former Eastern bloc countries such as Poland shows the "industry" has "gone berserk". It could fuel antisemitism that already shows dangerous signs of increasing. Finkelstein concludes: "The challenge today is to restore the Holocaust as a rational subject of inquiry. Only then can we really learn from it. The abnormality of the Nazi Holocaust springs not from the event itself but from the exploitative industry that has grown around it. The noblest gesture for those who perished is to preserve their memory, learn from their suffering and let them, finally, rest in peace." It's a stirring call. But peace is the last thing that
will break out among Jewry with the publication of this
book. Pictures added by this website | |||||||||
London, Tuesday, July 11, 2000 | ||||||||||
On Finkelstein's book "The Holocaust Industry", what a cheerfully racist admission of guilt Mr L. Horenstein's letter (of 13 July) boasts to his inferior gentile readers of the Evening Standard. It will make the perfect addendum quote hopefully for future reprints of Norman Finkelstein's brave new book. To those who missed it , here it is again: "Gentiles dare not do anything for fear of upsetting us. We are aware of this and rejoice in it and milk it for what it's worth." Again only a Jew may say this without fear of defamation.
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Doctor
Norman Finkelstein, a humanities professor at
Columbia University in New York, claims some Jewish leaders
are exploiting the Holocaust and peddling deliberate lies
about Nazi atrocities. 
If
David Irving had made these claims, he might have
found himself once again appearing in the Royal
Courts of Justice. .
.
Only a Jew could have written this book and
found a reputable publisher for it. Only a Jew could have
been brave enough to call it The Holocaust Industry, a title
which in itself will cause offence. If David Irving
had made these claims, he might have found himself once
again appearing in the Royal Courts of Justice; the leader
of US Muslims Louis Farrakhan would have been placed
by American public opinion even further beyond the pale and
if Jörg Haider had spoken like this, he would
have ensured yet harsher EU sanctions against Austria.
The
Holocaust was "reinvented" mainly to underpin US strategic
interests. Israel became America's surrogate in the
Middle-East and the Holocaust was used to justify the
alliance and, later, Israel's policy towards its Arab
neighbours.
So
entrenched is the belief in the uniqueness of Hitler's
crimes against the Jews that even to challenge it, according
to some powerful academics such
as Deborah Lipstadt, right,
-- victor over David Irving in the libel
courts -- amounts to Holocaust denial. Yet the conviction is
itself irrational, argues Finkelstein. No historical event
is unique. And, dangerously, it leads to myth-making and
distortion.
write
to David Irving