Norman Finkelstein Explains The Holocaust Industry
Norman Finkelstein
Reviewed By The Guardian Both my father and mother were survivors of the
Warsaw Ghetto and the Nazi concentration camps. Apart from my
parents, every family member on both sides was exterminated by the
Nazis. My earliest memory, so to speak, of the Nazi Holocaust is my
mother glued in front of the television watching the trial of Adolf
Eichmann (1961) when I came home from school. Although they had been
liberated from the camps only 16 years before the trial, an
unbridgeable abyss always separated, in my mind, the parents I knew
from that. Photographs of my mother's family hung on the
living-room wall. I could never quite make sense of my connection
with them, let alone conceive what happened. Apart from this phantom presence, I do not
remember the Nazi Holocaust ever intruding on my childhood. I do not
recall a single friend (or parent of a friend) asking a single
question about what my mother and father endured. This was not a
respectful silence. It was indifference. In this light, one cannot
but be sceptical of the outpourings of anguish in later decades,
after the Holocaust industry was firmly established. I sometimes think that American Jewry
"discovering" the Nazi Holocaust was worse than its having been
forgotten. True, my parents brooded in private; the suffering they
endured was not publicly validated. But wasn't that better than the
current crass exploitation of Jewish martyrdom? Before the Nazi
Holocaust became the Holocaust, only a few scholarly studies (by
Raul Hilberg, Viktor Frankl and Ella Lingens-Reiner) were published
on the subject. But this small collection of gems is better than
the shelves upon shelves of shlock that now line libraries and
bookstores. Both my parents, although daily reliving that past until
the day each died, lost interest by the end of their lives in the
Holocaust as a public spectacle. One of my father's lifelong friends
was a former inmate with him in Auschwitz, a seemingly incorruptible
leftwing idealist who on principle refused German compensation after
the war. Eventually he became a director of the Israeli Holocaust
museum Yad Vashem. Reluctantly and with genuine disappointment, my
father finally admitted that even this man had been corrupted by the
Holocaust industry, tailoring his beliefs for power and profit. As
the rendering of the Holocaust assumed ever more absurd forms, my
mother liked to quote (with intentional irony) Henry Ford: "History
is bunk". The tales of "Holocaust survivors" - all concentration
camp inmates, all heroes of the resistance - were a special source
of wry amusement in my home. My parents often wondered why I would grow so
indignant at the falsification and exploitation of the Nazi
genocide. The most obvious answer is that it has been used to
justify criminal policies of the Israeli state and US support for
these policies. There is a personal motive as well. I do care about
the memory of my family's persecution. The current campaign of the
Holocaust industry to extort money from Europe in the name of "needy
Holocaust victims" has shrunk the moral stature of their martyrdom
to that of a Monte Carlo casino. The Holocaust only emerged in American life after
Israel's victory in the 1967 Six Day war against its Arab
neighbours. [Since then] too many public and private resources have
been invested in memorialising the Nazi genocide. Most of the output
is worthless, a tribute not to Jewish suffering but to Jewish
aggrandisement. The Holocaust has proven to be an indispensable
ideological weapon. Through its deployment, one of the world's most
formidable military powers, with a horrendous human rights record,
has cast itself as a "victim" state, and the most successful ethnic
group in the US has likewise acquired victim status. Considerable
dividends accrue from this specious victimhood - in particular,
immunity to criticism, however justified. The time is long past to open our hearts to the
rest of humanity's sufferings. This was the main lesson my mother
imparted. I never once heard her say: "Do not compare." My mother
always compared. In the face of the sufferings of African-Americans,
Vietnamese and Palestinians, my mother's credo always was: "We are
all holocaust victims." The term "Holocaust survivor" originally
designated those who suffered the unique trauma of the Jewish
ghettos, concentration camps and slave labour camps, often in
sequence. The figure for these Holocaust survivors at war's end is
generally put at some 100,000. The number of living survivors cannot
be more than a quarter of this figure now. Because enduring the
camps became a crown of martyrdom, many Jews who spent the war
elsewhere represented themselves as camp survivors. Another strong
motive behind this misrepresentation, however, was material. The postwar German government provided compensation to Jews who had been
in ghettos or camps. Many Jews fabricated their pasts to meet this
eligibility requirement. "If everyone who claims to be a survivor
actually is one," my mother used to exclaim, "who did Hitler kill?"
Even within the Holocaust industry, Deborah
Lipstadt, for example, wryly observes that Holocaust survivors
frequently maintain they were personally examined by Josef Mengele
at Auschwitz. Because survivors are now revered as secular saints,
one doesn't dare question them. Preposterous statements pass without
comment.
Elie Wiesel reminisces in his acclaimed memoir that,
recently liberated from Buchenwald and only 18 years old, "I read
the Critique of Pure Reason - don't laugh! - in Yiddish." Leaving
aside Wiesel's acknowledgment that at the time "I was wholly
ignorant of Yiddish grammar," The Critique of Pure Reason was never
translated into Yiddish. "The truth I present is unvarnished,"
Wiesel sighs, "I cannot do otherwise." In recent years, "Holocaust survivor" has been
redefined to designate not only those who endured but also those who
managed to evade the Nazis. One contributor to a Holocaust website
maintained that, although he spent the war in Tel Aviv, he was a
Holocaust survivor because his grandmother died in Auschwitz.
According to Israel Gutman, a former inmate of Auschwitz, director
of Yad Vashem and a Holocaust lecturer at Hebrew University, "it's
not that important" whether Binjamin Wilkomirski's [now discredited
"autobiographical" account of childhood in the camps], Fragments, is
a fraud. "Wilkomirski has written a story which he has experienced
deeply; that's for sure . . . He is not a fake. He is someone who
lives this story very deeply in his soul." So it doesn't matter
whether he spent the war in a concentration camp or a Swiss chalet;
Wilkomirski is a Holocaust survivor because "his pain is authentic." The Israeli prime minister's office recently put
the number of "living Holocaust survivors" at nearly a million. The
main motive behind this inflationary revision is again not hard to
find. It is difficult to press massive new claims for reparations if
only a handful of Holocaust survivors are still alive. In the early 1950s, Germany entered into
negotiations with Jewish institutions and signed indemnification
agreements. It has paid out to date some $60bn. The German
government also negotiated a financial settlement with the
Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, an umbrella of
major Jewish organisations including the American Jewish Committee,
American Jewish Congress, B'nai B'rith, the Joint Distribution
Committee. The claims conference was supposed to use the monies,
$10m annually for 12 years, or about a billion dollars in current
values, for Jewish victims of Nazi persecution who had fallen
through the cracks in the compensation process. My mother was a case
in point. A survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, Majdanek concentration
camp and slave labour camps at Czestochowa and Skarszysko-Kamiena,
she received only $3,500 in compensation from the German government.
Other Jewish victims (and many who in fact were not victims),
however, received lifetime pensions from Germany, eventually
totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars. In a flagrant breach of
its letter and spirit, the conference earmarked the monies not for
the rehabilitation of Jewish victims who had received minimal
compensation but for the rehabilitation of Jewish "communities".
Indeed, a guiding principle of the claims conference prohibited use
of monies for "direct allocations to individuals". In a classic instance of looking after one's own,
however, the conference provided exemptions for two categories of
victims: rabbis and "outstanding Jewish leaders" received individual
payments. As the conference came under attack from defrauded Jews,
Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg cast a plague on both sides, sneering that:
"It's not about justice, it's a fight for money." When Germans or
Swiss refuse to pay compensation, the heavens cannot contain the
righteous indignation of organised American Jewry. But when Jewish
elites rob Jewish survivors, no ethical issues arise: it's just
about money. Others involved in the reparations process have
also done well. The reported annual salary of Saul Kagan, long-time
executive secretary of the claims conference, is $105,000. Kagan
rings up in 12 days what my mother received for suffering six years
of Nazi persecution. In recent years, the Holocaust industry has become
an outright extortion racket. Purporting to represent all of world
Jewry, living and dead, it is laying claim to Holocaust-era Jewish
assets throughout Europe. Fittingly dubbed the "last chapter of the
Holocaust", this double shakedown of European countries as well as
legitimate Jewish claimants first targeted Switzerland. [After a
protracted campaign which enlisted the American political
establishment] the Swiss finally caved in 1998 and agreed to pay
$1.25bn. "The aim ..." a Swiss bank's press release read, "is to
avert the threat of sanctions as well as long and costly court
proceedings." Its solicitude for "needy Holocaust survivors"
notwithstanding, the
World Jewish Congress
wants nearly half the
Swiss monies earmarked for Jewish organisations and "Holocaust
education". The Simon Wiesenthal Centre maintains that if "worthy"
Jewish organisations receive monies, "a portion should go to Jewish
educational centres". As they "angle" for a bigger share of the
loot, reform and orthodox organisations each claim that the 6m dead
would have preferred their branch of Judaism as financial
beneficiary. Meanwhile, the Holocaust industry forced
Switzerland into a settlement because time was allegedly of the
essence: "Needy Holocaust survivors are dying every day." Once the
Swiss signed away the money, however, the urgency miraculously
passed. More than a year after the settlement was reached there was
still no distribution plan. By the time the money is finally divvied
out, all the "needy Holocaust survivors" will probably be dead. In
fact, by last December, less than half of the $200m "Special Fund
for Needy Victims of the Holocaust" established in February 1997 had
been distributed to actual victims. After lawyers' fees have been
paid, [total attorney fee demands for the case run to $15m] the
Swiss monies will then flow into the coffers of "worthy" Jewish
organisations. The staggering dimensions of Hitler's Final
Solution are by now well known. And isn't the "normal" history of
humankind replete with horrifying chapters of inhumanity? A crime
need not be aberrant to warrant atonement. The challenge today is to
restore the Nazi 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 up around it. The Holocaust industry has always been bankrupt.
What remains is to openly declare it so. The time is long past to
put it out of business. The noblest gesture for those who perished
is to preserve their memory, learn from their suffering and let
them, finally, rest in peace. Finkelstein on ... The Simon Wiesenthal Centre:
"The Centre is renowned for its
'Dachau-meets-Disneyland' museum exhibits and 'the successful use of
sensationalistic scare tactics for fund-raising'." Daniel Goldhagen, author of Hitler's
Willing Executioners: "Although
bearing the apparatus of an academic study, Hitler's Willing
Executioners amounts to little more than a compendium of sadistic
violence ... Replete with gross misrepresentations of source
material and internal contradictions, Hitler's Willing Executioners
is devoid of scholarly value." Deborah Lipstadt, the Holocaust scholar
who was unsuccessfully sued for libel by David Irving:
"To document widespread Holocaust denial, Lipstadt cites a handful
of crank publications. Her pièce de résistance comes from Arthur
Butz, a nonentity who teaches electrical engineering." David Irving, historian and Holocaust
revisionist: "Irving, notorious as an
admirer of Hitler and sympathiser with German national socialism,
has nevertheless made an 'indispensable' contribution to our
knowledge of World War II." Elie Wiesel, Nobel laureate and Holocaust
survivor: "Elie Wiesel's performance
as official interpreter of the Holocaust is not happenstance.
Plainly he did not come to this position on account of his
humanitarian commitments or literary talents. Rather, Wiesel plays
this leading role because he unerringly articulates the dogmas of,
and accordingly sustains the interests underpinning, the Holocaust."
Read the second extract
The House Banking Committee did call one expert witness to testify on
this issue. In his House testimony Rubin stated that, after a most
superficial and rudimentary audit of banks in just New York, the value of
these accounts was put at $6m. Jewish organisations requested this sum for
"needy survivors" from Congress (abandoned dormant accounts in the US are
transferred to the state). "The United States," Rubin concluded, "took only
very limited measures to identify heirless assets in the United States, and
made available a mere $500,000, in contrast to the $32m acknowledged by
Swiss banks even prior to the Volcker inquiry." In other words, the US
record is much worse than the Swiss record. European Jews had also purchased plots of land and opened bank accounts
in Palestine during the British Mandate [1920-1948] to support the Zionist
enterprise or prepare for future immigration. Recently the Financial Times
reported that "unlike countries in Europe, Israel's banks and Zionist
organisations are resisting pressure to set up independent commissions to
establish how much property and how many dormant accounts were held by
Holocaust survivors, and how the owners can be located"...... The most
sensational charge levelled against the Swiss banks was that they required
death certificates from the heirs of Nazi holocaust victims. Israeli banks
have also demanded such documentation. One searches in vain, however, for
denunciations of the "perfidious Israelis".
Poland’s Holocaust
The Deafening Silence
White Men Accused Of Inciting Hate Simon Sheppard was found guilty of 11 offences and Stephen
Whittle was found guilty of five offences in July 2008. The jury was unable
to agree a verdict on a further seven charges against Simon Sheppard and it
was decided to have a retrial on six of these charges. The retrial began in
December 2008. The investigation into Simon Sheppard began when a
complaint about a leaflet called "Tales of the Holohoax" was reported to the
police in 2004 after it was pushed through the door of a Synagogue in
Blackpool. It was traced back to a Post Office Box in Hull registered to
Simon Sheppard.
QUOTE
The Holocaust has
proven to be an indispensable ideological weapon. Through its deployment, one of
the world’s most formidable military powers, with a horrendous human rights
record, has cast itself as a “victim” state, and the most successful ethnic
group in the United States has likewise acquired victim status. Considerable
benefits accrue to this specious victimhood – in particular, immunity to
criticism, however justified. ... The Holocaust industry represents neither
“those who were murdered” nor Jewish survivors and heirs. It is an extortion
racket wrapped in the mantle of Jewish suffering. Consider recent developments.
In the name of Holocaust victims, the Holocaust industry seized control of
denationalized properties worth billions of dollars in the former East Germany.
The legitimate Jewish heirs are currently suing the Holocaust industry to return
their properties. Nearly all the monies in the Swiss banks settlement will go
not to Jewish survivors or heirs but into the coffers of Jewish organizations.
In the German settlement, the Holocaust industry will also almost certainly keep
most of the monies designated for former Jewish slave-laborers.
UNQUOTE
So Jews rob their own as well as us but then this is about money. The Holocaust is just an
excuse.
QUOTE
Norman
Finkelstein has caused a storm on both sides of the Atlantic and it
is not hard to see why: he says the Holocaust has been exploited to
extort cash, that most 'survivors' are bogus and that too much money
is spent commemorating the Nazi genocide. In the first of two
exclusive extracts, he argues that it's time to shut down 'the
holocaust industry'
UNQUOTE
Professor Finkelstein went public, very public and got sacked for his pains. He
had a major argument with
Dershowitz, a mouthy Jew and lawyer in the human rights racket who
advocated torture of his enemies.
Professor Finkelstein's second extract is perhaps more telling than the first.
We are not supposed to know about American guilt or thieving by banks in
Israel.
QUOTE
The most explosive finding of the Volcker committee went
unreported in the American media. Alongside Switzerland, the committee
observed, the US was also a primary safe haven for transferable Jewish
assets in Europe. The question is, what happened to the dormant
Holocaust-era accounts in American banks?
UNQUOTE
One law for them
and one law for us. It is a well known principle or maybe just practice.
QUOTE
The Jewish Yizkor (Memorial) Book of
Krzemieniec confirms the position of the Jewish community: "And yet,
the Zionist Hebrews are useful and faithful subjects of the Soviet
regime. And indeed, the Jews adopted themselves quickly to life
under the new regime." For many, including my kin, the last sight they had of Poland and
their loved ones, was a cattle car bound for Siberia, and a Jew or
Ukrainian, or both, with a rifle on every wagon.
UNQUOTE
We get told that the Germans invaded Poland in 1939. Much less is said about the
fact the Russians invaded from the East and far less about the Jews who colluded
with them.
Curt Maynard tells us that the Jews are
very noisy about the accusations made against them but will never argue
specific facts. The clear inference is that they are guilty as charged.
QUOTE
Simon Sheppard and Stephen Whittle
[ of the Heretical Press
] have been convicted of inciting racial
hatred against Jews and other minority ethnic groups using material which
the Crown Prosecution Service said crossed the line from unpleasant and
obnoxious to a criminal offence. Reviewing lawyer Mari Reid, of the CPS' Counter Terrorism
Division said: "People are entitled to hold racist and extreme opinions
which others may find unpleasant and obnoxious. What they are not entitled
to do is to publish or distribute those opinions to the public in a
threatening, abusive or insulting manner either intending to stir up racial
hatred or in circumstances where it is likely racial hatred will be stirred
up.
UNQUOTE
A jury swallowed the
Party Line but didn't
take the point about Islamics but then how many of them were foreign
undesirables?
Inciting murder is crime - unless Islamics are the perpetrators. Ditto for
inciting hatred. But the police pander to evil - when politicians want it.
PS
The
Heretical Press is still, in 2017 on line.
