| The Holocaust Industry | |
|---|---|
Second edition cover |
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| Author(s) | Norman G. Finkelstein |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Political analysis |
| Publisher | Verso Books |
| Publication date | 2000 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback and paperback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 1-85984-488-X (Newest edition, paperback) |
| OCLC Number | 52486141 |
| Dewey Decimal | 940.53/18 22 |
| LC Classification | D804.3 .F567 2003 |
| Preceded by | A Nation on Trial |
| Followed by | Beyond Chutzpah |
The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering is a book published in 2000 by Norman G. Finkelstein, that argues that the American Jewish establishment exploits the memory of the Nazi Holocaust for political and financial gain, as well as to further the interests of Israel.[1] According to Finkelstein, this "Holocaust industry" has corrupted Jewish culture and the authentic memory of the Holocaust. Finkelstein's parents were both Holocaust survivors who had been inmates of concentration camps.[2]
The book was a bestseller in Europe, the Middle East and the Americas, and has been translated into 16 languages.[3]
Contents |
Finkelstein states that his consciousness of "the Nazi holocaust" is rooted in his parents' experiences in the Warsaw ghetto; with the exception of his parents themselves, "every family member on both sides was exterminated by the Nazis".[4] Nonetheless, during his childhood, no one ever asked any questions about what his mother and father had suffered. He suggests, "This was not a respectful silence. It was indifference."[4] It was only after the establishment of "the Holocaust industry", he suggests, that outpourings of anguish over the plight of the Jews in World War II began. This ideology in turn served to endow Israel with a status as "'victim' state" despite a "horrendous" human rights record.[4]
According to Finkelstein, his book is "an anatomy and an indictment of the Holocaust industry". He argues that "'The Holocaust' is an ideological representation of the Nazi holocaust".[5]
In the foreword to the first paperback edition, Finkelstein notes that the first hardback edition had been a considerable hit in several European countries and many languages, but had been panned in the US. He sees The New York Times as the main promotional vehicle of the "Holocaust industry", and notes that the 1999 Index listed 273 entries for the Holocaust and just 32 entries for the entire continent of Africa.
The second (2003) edition contained 100 pages of new material, primarily in chapter 3 on the Swiss Banks lawsuit. Finkelstein set out to provide a guide to the relevant sections of the case. He feels that the presiding judge elected not to docket crucial documents, and that the Claims Resolution Tribunal could no longer be trusted. Finkelstein claims the CRT was on course to vindicate the Swiss banks before it switched tacks in order to "protect the blackmailers reputation".
Finkelstein describes two known frauds, that of The Painted Bird by Polish writer Jerzy Kosinski and Fragments by Binjamin Wilkomirski, and how they were defended by people even after they'd been exposed. He identifies some of these people as members of the "Holocaust Industry", and notes that they also support each other. Elie Wiesel supported Kosinski; Israel Gutman and Daniel Goldhagen (see below) supported Wilkomirski; Wiesel and Gutman support Goldhagen.
Finkelstein has published heavy criticisms of several books in his career, and he did the same to Hitler's Willing Executioners by Daniel Johnah Goldhagen, which he calls "replete with gross misinterpretations of source material and internal contradictions", and says "the book is devoid of scholarly value". Independently, Ruth Bettina Birn (the world's leading authority on the archives that Goldhagen had consulted and chief historian for War Crimes with the Canadian Department of Justice) did the same - she and Finkelstein worked together on A Nation of Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth. Goldhagen refused the journal's invitation for a full rebuttal, and instead enlisted a London law firm to sue Birn and the Cambridge University Press. Protests were made to Birn's employer, calling her "a member of the perpetrator race" (she is German-born), prompting an official investigation of her.(p. 66)
Finkelstein scathingly compared the media treatment of the Holocaust and the media treatment of other genocides such as the Holodomor and the Armenian Genocide, particularly by members of what he calls "The Holocaust Industry". (1 to 1.5 million Armenians died in the years between 1915 and 1917/1923 - denial includes the claim that they were the result of a Civil War within World War I, or refusal to accept there were deaths). In 2001, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres went so far as to dismiss it as "allegations". However, by this time historical consensus was changing, and he was "angrily compared ... to a holocaust denier" by Dr Charny, executive director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem.[8]
In August 2007, the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity produced a letter signed by 53 Nobel Laureates re-affirming the Genocide Scholars' conclusion that the 1915 killings of Armenians constituted genocide.[9] However, Wiesel's organization asserted there would be no legal "basis for reparations or territorial claims", anticipating Turkish anxieties that it could prompt financial or property claims. Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League announced: "Upon reflection, the consequences of those actions were indeed tantamount to genocide".[10]
According to Finkelstein, Elie Wiesel characterizes any suggestion that he has profited from the "Holocaust Industry", or even any criticism at all, as Holocaust denial.[11] Questioning a survivor's testimony, denouncing the role of Jewish collaborators, suggesting that Germans suffered during the bombing of Dresden or that any state except Germany committed crimes in World War II are all evidence of Holocaust denial – according to Deborah Lipstadt[12] – and the most "insidious" forms of Holocaust denial are "immoral equivalencies", denying the uniqueness of The Holocaust.[13] Finkelstein examines the implications of applying this standard to another member of the "Holocaust Industry", Daniel Goldhagen, who argued that Serbian actions in Kosovo "are, in their essence, different from those of Nazi Germany only in scale".[14]
According to Finkelstein, Deborah Lipstadt claims there is widespread Holocaust denial - yet in "Denying the Holocaust" her prime example is Arthur Butz, author of The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. The chapter on him is entitled "Entering the Mainstream" - but Finkelstein considers that, were it not for the likes of Lipstadt, no one would ever have heard of Arthur Butz. Holocaust deniers have as much influence in the US as the Flat Earth Society (p. 69). Finkelstein believes there to be only one "truly mainstream" holocaust denier—Bernard Lewis, who was convicted in France of denying the Armenian genocide.[15] Since Lewis is pro-Israel, "this instance ... raises no hackles in the United States."
The critical response has been varied. In addition to prominent supporters, such as Noam Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn, the Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg is on record as praising Finkelstein's book:
I refer now to the part of the book that deals with the claims against the Swiss banks, and the other claims pertaining to forced labor. I would now say in retrospect that he was actually conservative, moderate and that his conclusions are trustworthy. He is a well-trained political scientist, has the ability to do the research, did it carefully, and has come up with the right results. I am by no means the only one who, in the coming months or years, will totally agree with Finkelstein's breakthrough."[16]
Others have argued that The Holocaust Industry is an unscholarly work that promotes antisemitic stereotypes. For example, according to Israeli journalist Yair Sheleg, in August 2000, German historian Hans Mommsen called it "a most trivial book, which appeals to easily aroused anti-Semitic prejudices."[17]
Historian Omer Bartov[18] criticized Finkelstein's notion of Holocaust profiteers as a "novel variation of 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion '". In reviewing the first edition of the book, Bartov wrote:
I find so striking about The Holocaust Industry is that it is almost an exact copy of the arguments it seeks to expose. It is filled with precisely the kind of shrill hyperbole that Finkelstein rightly deplores in much of the current media hype over the Holocaust; it is brimming with the same indifference to historical facts, inner contradictions, strident politics and dubious contextualizations; and it oozes with the same smug sense of moral and intellectual superiority.
Here he [Finkelstein] combines an old-hat 1960s view of Israel as the outpost of American Imperialism with a novel variation on the anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which warned of a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. Now, however, the Jewish conspiracy is intended to "shake down" (his favorite phrase) such innocent entities as Swiss banks, German corporations and East European owners of looted Jewish property, all in order to consolidate Jewish power and influence without giving the real survivors of the genocide anything but empty rhetoric.
This book is, in a word, an ideological fanatic's view of other people's opportunism, by a writer so reckless and ruthless in his attacks that he is prepared to defend his own enemies, the bastions of Western capitalism, and to warn that "The Holocaust" will stir up an anti-Semitism whose significance he otherwise discounts. Like any conspiracy theory, it contains several grains of truth; and like any such theory, it is both irrational and insidious. Finkelstein can now be said to have founded a Holocaust industry of his own."[19]
Finkelstein was to later blame Bartov's review for the poor US sales of the book.[20]
University of Chicago Professor Peter Novick, whose work Finkelstein described as providing the "initial stimulus" for The Holocaust Industry,[21] asserted in the July 28, 2000 Jewish Chronicle (London) that the book is replete with "false accusations", "egregious misrepresentations", "absurd claims" and "repeated mis-statements" ("A charge into darkness that sheds no light"). Finkelstein replied to the "hysterical" allegations by Novick on his homepage.[22]
Hasia Diner has accused Peter Novick and Finkelstein of being "harsh critics of American Jewry from the left," and challenges the notion reflected in their books that American Jews did not begin to commemorate the Holocaust until post 1967.[23]
Andrew Ross reviewing the book for Salon magazine wrote:
On the issue of reparations, he barely acknowledges the wrongs committed by the Swiss and German institutions — the burying of Jewish bank accounts, the use of slave labor — that gave rise to the recent reparations drive. The fear that the reparations will not wind up in the hands of those who need and deserve them most is a legitimate concern. But the idea that survivors have been routinely swindled by Jewish institutions is a gross distortion. The chief reason why survivors have so far seen nothing of the $1.25 billion Swiss settlement, reached in 1998, is that U.S. courts have yet to rule on a method of distribution. On other reparations and compensation settlements, the Claims Conference, a particular bete noire of Finkelstein, says that it distributed approximately $220 million to individual survivors in 1999 alone."[24]
Finkelstein responded to his critics in the foreword to the second edition:
Mainstream critics allege that I conjured a "conspiracy theory" while those on the Left ridicule the book as a defense of "the banks". None, so far as I can tell, question my actual findings."
Publishing history of The Holocaust Industry: