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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
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