Not quite sure about the sub-text of this message below.

The LA Times (local corporate medium) this morn. has a story
on the town of Auschwitz (which LAT insists is the wrong name-- in
itself a suspect position--what does it matter?)
In the story they manage to get in some cold war shots at the 'communists'
I suppose as balance for the monstrous behavior of the fascists in
Germany.
wcm
>
> comments?...
> fs
>
>
> http://www.normanfinkelstein.com
> The following article originally appeared in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
>
>  Will THE HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY Incite Anti-Semitism?
>
> By Norman G. Finkelstein
>
>  The main thesis of my new book is that The Holocaust has effectively
> become an industry.  Jewish elites, acting in concert with the US
> government, exploit the horrific suffering of the millions of Jews
> exterminated during World War II and the few who managed to survive for
> power and profit.  In its ruthless exploitation of Jewish suffering, the
>
> Holocaust industry has arguably become a fomenter of anti-Semitism and a
> purveyor of Holocaust denial.
>
> The book is divided into three chapters.  In the first chapter I explore
> the genesis of the Holocaust industry.  During the postwar years
> American
> Jewish leaders, eager to please the US government as it aligned with a
> barely de-Nazified West Germany, banished The Holocaust from public
> discourse. After the June 1967 Middle East war, Israel became a key ally
> of the US. American Jewish elites, hitherto wary of Israel (they feared
> the
> bogey of "dual loyalty"), fervently embraced the Jewish state.  For Jews
> now stood on the front lines defending American interests against the
> retrograde Third World/Arab hordes.  Supporting Israel accordingly
> facilitated Jewish assimilation in the US.  Posing as the natural
> interlocutors between the US government and its "strategic asset" in the
>
> Middle East, Jewish elites could also enter the inner sanctums of
> American power.  To deflect criticism, American Jewish elites
> "remembered" the Nazi holocaust which, ideologically recast, proved a
> potent weapon.
>
> In chapter 2, I critically scrutinize the central dogmas of Holocaust
> ideology: (1) The Holocaust marks a categorically unique event, and
> (2)The Holocaust marks the climax of an irrational, eternal Gentile
> hatred of
> Jews. The main proponent of the "uniqueness" doctrine is Elie Wiesel.
> For Wiesel, The Holocaust "leads into darkness," "negates all answers,"
> "defies both knowledge and description," and so forth.  Such
> formulations obscure more than they illuminate.  The "uniqueness"
> doctrine, although intellectually stifling and morally discreditable
> (the suffering of  non-Jewish victims "cannot compare"), persists on
> account
> of its political utility.  Unique suffering confers unique entitlement.
>
> According to the complementary Holocaust dogma of "eternal Gentile
> hatred," Jews were exterminated during World War II because all
> Gentiles, be it as active perpetrators or as passive collaborators,
> wanted
> them dead.  Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's ponderous effort to prove one
> variant of this dogma in Hitler's Willing Executioners lacked scholarly
> value.  But like the "uniqueness" doctrine, it has proven to be
> politically useful.  To account for criticism of Israel, American writer
> Cynthia Ozick had a ready answer: "The world wants to wipe out the
> Jews...the world has always wanted to wipe out the Jews."  Indeed this
> dogma confers
> total license: intent as the Gentiles always are on murdering Jews, Jews
>
> have every right to protect themselves, however they see fit.  Deploring
> the "Holocaust lesson" of eternal Gentile hatred, respected Israeli
> scholar Boas Evron observes that it is "really tantamount to a
> deliberate breeding of paranoia.... This mentality...condones in advance
> any
> inhuman treatment of non-Jews, for the prevailing mythology is that 'all
> people collaborated with the Nazis in the destruction of Jewry,' hence
> everything is permissible to Jews in their relationship to other
> peoples."
>
> Holocaust dogma exerts a pernicious influence on scholarship. Consider
> for example Guenter Lewy's The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies.
> Published this past year by Oxford University Press and praised by
> Holocaust historian Saul Friedlander for its "great compassion," the
> central thesis of this study is that Gypsies didn't suffer like the Jews
> -
> indeed, didn't even suffer a genocide - during World War II.  Lewy's
> argument goes like this: Gypsies were ruthlessly slaughtered by the
> Einsatzgruppen like the Jews, but only because they were suspected of
> spying;  Gypsies were deported to Auschwitz like the Jews, but only "to
> get rid of them, not to kill them;"  Gypsies were gassed at Chelmno like
>
> the Jews, but only because they had contracted typhus; most of the few
> remaining Gypsies were sterilized like the Jews, not however to prevent
> their propagation but only to "prevent contamination of 'German blood.'"
>
> It's not hard to imagine the public and scholarly reaction if one
> replaced
> Gypsies with Jews in Lewy's book.
>
> In my last chapter I explore the material compensation issue.  I contend
>
> that the Holocaust industry is guilty of a "double shakedown": it
> misappropriates monies from European governments as well as from the
> actual survivors of Nazi persecution.  Even the official history of the
> Jewish Claims Conference acknowledges that the Conference made
> improper use of the monies originally earmarked by the German
> government for Holocaust victims. During the recent slave-labor
> negotiations, the Claims Conference put forth wildly inflated figures
> for
> still living former Jewish slave-laborers.  In doing so, the Conference
> forces a radical revision of our understanding of the Nazi holocaust:
> increasing the number of survivors means decreasing the number of
> victims.  Indeed, the numbers used by the Claims Conference place it
> uncomfortably close to the arguments of Holocaust revisionists.  "If
> everyone who claims to be a survivor actually is one," my mother (a
> concentration camp survivor) used to exclaim, "who did Hitler kill?"
>
> Nearly all the charges the Holocaust industry leveled against the Swiss
> banks were either false or grossly hypocritical.  The definitive Volcker
>
> Committee report found that the Swiss banks did not systematically deny
> Holocaust victims or their heirs access to accounts after the war and
> did
> not systematically destroy bank records to cover their tracks.  My
> book's
> most important finding was that, alongside Switzerland, the United
> States was also a primary safe haven for transferrable Jewish assets
> before and during World War II. The obvious question is, What
> happened to the dormant Holocaust-era accounts in American banks?
> During the Congressional hearings on the Swiss banks, one expert
> witness - Seymour Rubin of American University - was called to testify
> on
> this matter.  Rubin concluded that the record of the American banks was
> worse than the record of the Swiss banks: "The United States took only
> very limited measures to identify heirless assets in the United States,
> and made available...a mere $500,000, in contrast to the $32,000,000
> acknowledged by Swiss banks even prior to the Volcker inquiry."  The
> New York Times devoted a full page of its book review to a savage ad
> hominem assault on me; it made no mention of this remarkable - and
> damning - revelation.  The Holocaust industry demanded a final
> settlement with the Swiss bankers before the Volcker committee
> completed its work because "needy Holocaust victims are dying every
> day."  Yet once the Swiss agreed to a $1.25 billion settlement in August
>
> 1998, the urgency suddenly vanished.  Two years have elapsed but not
> a single cent of the Swiss monies has been distributed to the actual
> claimants.
>
> The Holocaust industry has diminished the moral stature of the Jewish
> people's martyrdom.  For this reason alone it deserves public censure.
> Many well-meaning Germans worry that my book may incite anti-
> Semitism. I respect and fully share this concern.  To deny the danger
> would be disingenuous. Yet, moral action is never unalloyed: there are
> always unintended or undesired repercussions.  To decide whether to
> proceed one must exercise judgment - hopefully good judgment but at
> least judgment in good faith. It is primarily the ruthless and reckless
> tactics of the Holocaust industry that foment anti-Semitism.  During the
>
> slave-labor negotiations, I met privately with a member of the German
> delegation holding unimpeachable moral credentials.  For several hours
> he defended the Claims Conference as vehemently as I denounced it.
> Just before leaving, however, he turned to meand said: "I'll be honest
> with you.  On our side, we all feel like we're being blackmailed."  I
> suspect that privately  many decent Germans agree - regrettably, with
> good reason.  One can also assume that many decent Swiss privately
> echo these sentiments.  And it is not difficult to guess what East
> Europeans think as the Holocaust industry, falsely claiming as its own
> the property of murdered Jews, presses for an acceleration in the pace
> of property evictions.  Incidentally, while American Jewish
> organizations
> have called for a worldwide boycott of  the new Austrian government,
> Stuart Eizenstat, US Deputy Secretary of the Treasury and the
> Holocaust industry's chief diplomat, entered restitution negotiations
> with
> this same Austrian government and then acclaimed it for having "shown
> leadership and not just in Austria but leadership to the rest of Europe
> and to the world about how one can reconcile with one's past, and how
> one can heal wounds even many decades later."  The purpose of my
> book is to facilitate a long overdue opendebate.  Kept under wraps in
> deference to "political correctness," the discontent will only fester.
> To
> avert a resurgence of anti-Semitism, the Holocaust profiteers must be
> publicly exposed and repudiated.
>
> Finally, I emphatically believe that the Nazi holocaust should be
> studied.
> Yet one cannot learn anything substantive until and unless the Holocaust
>
> industry is shut down.  Meaningful historical inquiry practically
> requires
> that comparisons be made.  And what significant moral lesson can
> possibly be drawn from a dogma that reduces the Nazi holocaust to a
> Manichaean struggle between Gentiles and Jews?  Holocaust
> dogmatism preempts understanding the crucial individual and historical
> dimensions of Nazism.  In The Holocaust Industry  I attempt to represent
>
> my parents' legacy.  The main lesson they imparted is that we should
> always compare.  To make out moral distinctions between "our" suffering
> and "theirs" is itself a moral travesty.  "Do not compare" is the mantra
> of
> moral blackmailers.
>
> http://www.normanfinkelstein.com
>