Norman G. Finkelstein: The Holcaust Industry - Part 1/5

[Dr. Izzeddin Musa]

Part 1/5:
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*The Holcaust Industry*
Reflections on the exploitation of Jewish Suffeing

Norman G. Finkelstein

Verso / London, New York
ISBN: 1-85984-773-0
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"It seems to me the Holocaust is being sold - it is not being
taught."

Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, Yale University

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In short this book will be published in Germany. Should the
"Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland" succeed to prevent
this publishing, we will translate the whole book, word by word.

Izzeddin Musa, Nov. 15, 2000
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Extract:
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INTRODUCTION

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 dividends
accrue from this specious victimhood - in particular, immunity to
criticism, however justified. Those enjoying this immunity, I might
add, have not escaped the moral corruptions that typically attend
it. From this perspective, 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.

(Remark: like the use of the "Auschwitz-club" against the german
inferiority complex as a moralizing second-degree murderer tool in
the course of current dialogue. M. Wolffsohn - zu Deutsch: Einsatz
der "Auschwitz-Keule" als moralisierendes Totschlagsinstrument in
der aktuellen Diskussion gegen nationale Minderwertigkeitskomplexe
der Deutschen.)

The initial stimulus for this book was Peter Novick's seminal study,
"The Holocaust in american Life". More a congeries of provocative
apercus than a sustained critique, The Holocaust in American Life
belongs to the venerable American tradition of muckraking. Yet like
most muckrakers, Novick focuses only on the most egregious abuses.

Novik's central analytical category is "memory". Currently all the
rage in the ivory tower, "memory" is surely the most impoverished
concept to come down the academic pike in a long time.

(A remark on a realistic book writer, not muckraker, I might add
Leon Weliczker Wells:
"And they done Poloitics, the American Zionists and the Holocaust"
I.M.)

My original interest in the Nazi holocaust was personal. Both my
father and mother were survivers of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Nazi
concentration camps.

The more important point, however, is this. A part fron this phantom
presence, I do not remember the Nazi holocaust ever intruding on my
childhood. The main reason was that no one outside my family seemed
to care about what had happened.

I sometimes think that American Jewry "discovering" the Nazi holo-
caust was worse than its having been forgotten.

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.

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... The current cam-
paign 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... , to truly learn
from the nazi holocaust, its physical dimension must be reduced and
its moral dimension expanded.

Norman G. Finkelstein
April 2000
New York City

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