Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering / Edition 2

by Norman G. Finkelstein

Overview

In an iconoclastic and controversial study, Norman G. Finkelstein moves from an interrogation of the place the Holocaust has come to occupy in American culture to a disturbing examination of recent Holocaust compensation agreements. It was not until the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, when Israel’s evident strength brought it into line with US foreign policy, that memory of the Holocaust began to acquire the exceptional prominence it enjoys today. Leaders of America’s Jewish community were delighted that Israel was now deemed a major strategic asset and, Finkelstein contends, exploited the Holocaust to enhance this newfound status. Their subsequent interpretations of the tragedy are often at variance with actual historical events and are employed to deflect any criticism of Israel and its supporters. Recalling Holocaust fraudsters such as Jerzy Kosinski and Binjamin Wilkomirski, as well as the demagogic constructions of writers like Daniel Goldhagen, Finkelstein contends that the main danger posed to the memory of Nazism’s victims comes not from the distortions of Holocaust deniers but from prominent, self-proclaimed guardians of Holocaust memory. Drawing on a wealth of untapped sources, he exposes the double shakedown of European countries as well as legitimate Jewish claimants, and concludes that the Holocaust industry has become an outright extortion racket. Thoroughly researched and closely argued, The Holocaust Industry is all the more disturbing and powerful because the issues it deals with are so rarely discussed.

In a devastating new postscript to this best-selling book, Norman G. Finkelstein documents the Holocaust industry’s scandalous cover-up of the blackmail of Swiss banks, and in a new appendix demolishes an influential apologia for the Holocaust industry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781859844885
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	10/16/2003
Edition description:	Revised
Pages:	287
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.86(d)

About the Author

Norman G. Finkelstein is the author of A Nation on Trial (with Ruth Bettina Birn), named a notable book for 1998 by the New York Times Book Review, and Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Foreword to the Second Paperback Edition	xi
	Foreword to the First Paperback Edition	xv
	Introduction	1
Chapter 1	Capitalizing The Holocaust	9
Chapter 2	Hoaxers, Hucksters, and History	39
Chapter 3	The Double Shakedown	79
	Conclusion	141
	Postscript to the First Paperback Edition	151
	Postscript to the Second Paperback Edition	179
	Appendix to the Second Paperback Edition	207
	Index	275

Editorial Reviews

Finkelstein has raised some important and uncomfortable issues.

The Jewish Quarterly

[S]cathing in his denunciation of the institutions and individuals who have cropped up around the issue of reparations.

New York Press

His basic argument that memories of the Holocaust are being debased is serious and should be given its due.

The Economist

A lucid, provocative and passionate book.

New Statesman

The most explosive book of the year.

The Guardian

Finkelstein's downright pugilistic book delivers a wallop.

LA Weekly

The most controversial book of the year.

Guardian

Breathtaking in [its] angry accuracy and irony.

Jewish Quarterly

When it comes to analyzing how 'The Holocaust' has been employed to advance political interests, Finkelstein is at his best.

Nation

His basic argument that memories of the Holocaust are being debased is serious and should be given its due.

Economist

Finkelstein (City U. of New York) provocatively argues that US Jewish organizations and others have capitalized on the Holocaust as an ideological tool for their own agendas. The book lacks an index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

"The most controversial book of the year."
—Guardian

"His basic argument that memories of the Holocaust are being debased is serious and should be given its due."
—Economist

"If his indictment is a true one, it should prompt prosecutions, sackings, protest. The book shouts scandal. It is a polemic, communicated at maximum volume."
—Times

"He deserves to be heard ... he is making some profound points that many younger and more thoughtful Jews have quietly been attempting to debate, but whose voices have been stilled by the establishment, particularly in the US."
—Evening Standard

"This is, in short, a lucid, provocative and passionate book. Anyone with an open mind and an interest in the subject should ignore the critical brickbats and read what Finkelstein has to say."
—New Statesman

"Finkelstein’s downright pugilistic book delivers a wallop – mostly because few authors have had the courage or nerve to say, as he does, that the Nazi genocide has been distorted and robbed of its true moral lessons and instead has been put to use as ‘an indispensable ideological weapon’. It’s a provocative thesis that makes you want to reject it even as you are compelled to keep reading by the strength of his case and the bravura of his assertions."
—LA Weekly

"He is scathing in his denunciation of the institutions and individuals who have cropped up around the issue of reparations in the last several years."
—New York Press

"Finkelstein's place in the whole history of writing history is assured, and those who in the end are proven right triumph, and he will be among those who will have triumphed, albeit, it so seems, at great cost."
—Raul Hilberg

From the Publisher