Israel's Most Powerful Weapon--The Holocaust

It doesn't matter if the book is embraced by anti-semites and white power groups?

I guess not, if it was something factual. 600,000 former jewish inmates is dubious, 20% isn't factual. 3 Millions not factual, so if that's how this person legitimizes there book, it doesn't matter if was written by a jew, a white supremacist, or a talking dog.

It's a dubious series of misinformation that's embraced by white supremacists.

I can't comment on the whole book as I haven't read it, but those numbers are so innacurate that they must have been intentional.

I'll try to spell this out slowly for you.

The official scholarly accounts for how many Jewish people were killed during the Holocaust, rely on population shifts, census information, and official nazi records. These numbers vary from somewhere between 5.25 to up to 7.5 million people. 6 million is auniversally accepted shorthand.

http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_holocaust/faqs/answers/faq_3.html

To combat these well documented numbers, the author uses a number 'the holocaust industry demanded compensation for 135,000 former inmates' Never does it mention details, who the face of this 'holocaust industry is' in this context.

So the starting number may be fabricated, we don't know where it came from, and it doesn't mention whether or not all these victims were Jewish.

Then it projects that there must have been 600,000 former jewish camp inmates, based on how many people reportedly died after they left the camps. (which the author contends how many people left the camps, but uses the same forumla of survival rates to create the number 600,000.)

And then states that "...'if' 20% of the inmates were Jewish..." Which they weren't.

So what I'm getting at here, is the fact if this is the very premise of the book, it's based on horribly bad math.

It doesn't "stand on it's own" Topolm. Not even a little bit.

 

If you'd like to contend with the realities of the Holocaust, please come here with some data that wasn't contrived in a book which none of us have access. A book which is also embraced by white supremacists...

Feel free to continue debating this, but please don't post things like that again. I feel dumber for even having to contest those figures.

 

Your arguments are broader in scope than the points I raise. In effect, they are irrelevant.

It is irrelevant who embraces the book. The truth is the truth. Its not up for sale to the highest bidder. It is unchangeable and unmaleable. African Americans, Hispanics, Caucausians, Leftists, liberals, democrats, republicans, conservatives Jews etc: they all approve of this book's message. In effect people from all walks of life are interested in it. It is aptly documented and undeniably an admirable and brave piece of scholorship. After reading it, I could see why so many hundreds of millions of muslims are disturbed by racist zionist jewish supremacism. This book is packed with facts and convincingly argues its points. You on the other hand do not. Sorry. I feel like I am debating a toddler ;-)

People should read "The Holocaust Industry" by Norman Finkelstein and come to their own conclusions. Afterall, people are intelligent and can think for themselves ;-)

Please dont post anymore okay?

 

I adressed every factual point your selections of 'literature' (I'm being generous) raised, I suppose doging my questions with jabs is easier then trying to defend your point of view.

Good luck with the propaganda Topalm. You're not going to attract many people to your cause other then a few 16-27 male loners without analytical skills. Most people are able to see thinly veiled anti-semitic rhetoric.

 

LOL! Whatever helps you sleep at night sunshine. Intelligent people of any age group (most of the people here) would be wise to read the book and come to the most logical conclusion which would be a stance somewhat in line with that of Professor Finkelstein. You are certainly a crude apologist for Zionist Jewish supremacism and your posts reflect that sentiment. I have the moral high ground of course. Millions of Americans are waking up... Thank goodness.

 

Of course stating that the Holocaust happened and was on scale with all scholarly estimates of the scope of it were accurate means I support Israeli tanks blowing up Lebanese villages.

I actually sit around in my underwear wrapped in an Israeli flag, watching Lebanese villages getting bombed, drinking beer and masterbating. Ipso Facto.

I've never met a Lebanese, but Fox News told me their made of 3/4 nazi and 1/4 camel.

With persuasive arguments like this, I should wonder why everyone doesn't believe your white power rhetoric.

I hope sardonicism isn't lost on you. You've got no idea on how close this issue is to me or what side I'm on. It isn't Israels.

 

LOL! Gosh, you're too funny. Keep it up amigo ;-)
You sound SO credible you racist zionist supremacist. Your position is abundantly clear...

 

I'm glad I made my bias clear by stating that the Holocaust was real.

Unfortunatly, you're not such a scream. If you have anything you want to present as fact, I'll look into it.

Until then, you can have the last word.

 

Rat

“They targeted czarists and Christians in particular. We never hear about this, though. How is what the communists did any less genocidal than what the Nazis did?”

Sorry man, but can you tell me how being a supporter of the Tsar and being a follower of the Christian faith, is a genetic or racial traits?

“And even if the 6 million number was accurate, which it's not, what about the millions of NON-JEWS who also died? Why is it that we only hear about the Jews?”

What exact and uncontested evidence have you for saying the normally recognised figure of five to six million Jewish murders is wrong?


As to the non-jewish deaths, they are not exactly hidden or unmentioned, it is just that most of the deaths were Jewish.

Think of the Twin towers people mention the loss of American life but other groups also lost their lives it is just that the American losses were greater.

 

Topolm

Thank you. However it is strange that the rense articule never came up in my original search but did not long after I posted the stormfront link, but then people are submitting articles to rense all the time. But probably just one of those Google glitches.

The problem is that the piece you cut and pasted still seems to have originated on the white supremist stormfront site as chapter eight in their ‘review’ of the holocaust (and it is not the first time neo-nazis or stormfront articles have made there way onto rense).

Anyway it still doesn’t answer the question of what is your point?

The premise of the original article in this thread doesn’t stand, it doesn’t seem the holocaust is the greatest weapon Israel has, the article is just a rather hysterical opinion piece.

The argument you (and Rat) seem to be trying to present, that somehow there should be some type of league table of death and on it in your opinions the holocaust should be relegated to second or third division, seems a bit sick.

I mean by what criteria do you gauge one person’s death over another?

Is it just numbers?

You have mentioned numbers a few times claiming that occurrences of larger numbers of deaths are heard about less than that of the holocaust.

In numbers the Spanish Flu Pandemic, cost the lives of some 100 million, and smallpox decimated the native American populations of the new world, but such natural disasters don’t seem to be what you’re getting at. You seem to be aiming at some form of intent, so natural deaths from smallpox don’t count but purposely giving smallpox infected bedding to ‘Indians’ by US soldiers and citizens, would presumably get into your league table?

So is your league table based on deliberate intent?

Much has been mentioned of the deaths caused by the policies of Mao Zedong especially in the stavations caused by the great leap forward. But those deaths were not calculated, they were the by-product of a stupid and un-thought through project based on ideology rather than pragmatism that as a result lead to the deaths of millions. The leadership were certainly idiots and most definitely callous and they did little to lessen the suffering they had caused but it wasn’t meant to be the outcome, in other words it wasn’t deliberate.

The Nazis did deliberately try and wipe out inferior races and purposely put in mechanisms and processes to just bring about that end.

But you seem to be saying that these calculated murders are of lesser importance than others that were not, why?

**

You say “The truth is the truth” in relation to the holocaust but what do you mean? What ‘truth’ are you talking about? Very few things in this universe are fixed as being totally, eternally and universally seen as ‘true’.

Different peoples views of what is ‘true’ and what is not may be different, a 19th century US slave owner’s or white supremacists view of race relations might be very different than my own.

So it is changeable, once many people in the US accepted that black people were an ‘inferior’ race, thankfully in present day America that number seems to have greatly lessened.

You say that many people approve of Norman Finkelstein’s message but which message the bit’s you’ve reproduced that originated on the stormfront site does not give the whole message just part of it. Some might approve others disagree with one part but not another, there is no universally approved ‘truth’ there.


You say that the “book is packed with facts and convincingly argues its points” but many contest the supposed ‘facts’ and find the arguments unconvincing.

But what is your position?

Are you saying that you argee with the selected quotes from Finkelstein’s book if so why? Or are you playing devils advocate and presenting a argument you find unconvincing?

If the former shouldn’t we begin to discuss YOUR views in an open and honest way, and if it is the latter what really is the point?

 

Ok lets start seeing Finkelstein’s thoughts through others eyes

The first review is by salon the second by SOCIALIST REVIEW


**

"The Holocaust Industry" by Norman G. Finkelstein
Is this indictment of Jewish lobby groups a righteous battle cry or something more sinister?
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Andrew Ross
Aug. 30, 2000
How Norman Finkelstein must have groaned when he read the words of Hadassah Lieberman, wife of the Democratic vice presidential nominee, as she addressed a crowd of Democratic Party supporters at the War Memorial in Tennessee earlier this month. The memorial, she told the audience, with her husband, Joseph, and Vice President Al Gore standing by, commemorates "the American heroes, the soldiers who actually liberated my mother in Dachau and Auschwitz."
As the New York Times gently pointed out, the memorial actually commemorates the 3,400 Tennesseans who died in World War I; and it was the Russians, not the Americans, who liberated Auschwitz. Even more enraging to Finkelstein, no doubt, was this comment from Hadassah Lieberman's friend, Mindy Weisel, who told the Times: "I think her background as a [Holocaust] survivor's daughter has given her a humanity that a lot of people don't have."
For Finkelstein, such cavalier inaccuracies and holier-than-thou allusions are classic outgrowths of a phenomenon that has transformed the Nazi atrocities against the Jews of Europe into a largely American-driven myth designed to serve the narrow interests of homegrown Jewish elites. The avalanche of books, movies, Holocaust memorials, university chairs, high school courses -- and most recently the "shakedown" of Swiss banks and German insurance companies on the issue of reparations for Jewish wartime victims -- is all part of a corrupt "Holocaust industry" that needs to be exposed and put out of business so that the dead of Auschwitz and Treblinka can finally rest in peace.
Finkelstein is not the first to explore this theme. American, British and Israeli scholars and critics have been saying something similar over the past few years, most notably Peter Novick of the University of Chicago, whose highly regarded 1999 book, "The Holocaust in American Life," is about to be reissued in paperback. But where Novick and others bring substance, reason and some empathy to the discomforting issue, Finkelstein brings rage, dogma and ultimately a deep unpleasantness.
Finkelstein's argument goes like this: Postwar Americans, including American Jews, appeared to know little and care even less about the Nazi Holocaust. Echoing points made by Novick, Finkelstein argues that Jews were more concerned about integrating fully into American life than about harping on a dreadful historical episode that would set them apart both as an ethnic group outside the mainstream and, worse, as victims.
What changed? According to Finkelstein, U.S. foreign policy interests in the Middle East, beginning in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War, made a pronounced tilt toward Israel, a tilt cheered by powerful Jewish lobby groups always on the lookout for fresh fundraising angles. And what better way to lash Jews (and non-Jews) to the mast of a pro-Israel foreign policy -- encouraged in the 1970s by right-wing Israeli governments seeking to deflect attention from their own egregious treatment of the Palestinians -- than to warn darkly that Arab hostility to Israel threatened to explode into a second Final Solution? And what better way to effect that than with an avalanche of Holocaust propaganda and liberal doses of moral blackmail, foisted upon Jew and non-Jew alike by such Holocaust self-dramatizers as Elie Wiesel, reminding us everywhere of the uniqueness, unforgivability and ever-possible reappearance of the death camps of decades ago?
The Holocaust industry's latest frontier, says Finkelstein, is cold cash. The drive for reparations, headed up by organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Jewish Material Claims Conference, constitutes nothing less than a "double shakedown" under the guise of recovering assets belonging to and otherwise compensating Jewish victims and survivors of the Nazis. Employing the services of politically connected lawyers like former Republican Sen. Alfonse D'Amato and former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, these organizations, charges Finkelstein, have grossly exaggerated the number of Jewish survivors while using outright political threats against European governments and institutions. The money itself has gone not to the victims (who include Finkelstein's mother, a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto, who received a paltry $3,500) but to various "institutes," "memorials" and "Holocaust education" projects and to assist Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe.
The reparations issue is the most detailed and troubling section of Finkelstein's short book. Recent reports that $400 million has been paid to U.S. accounting firms such as Arthur Andersen, KPMG and Price Waterhouse, which charged sky-high auditing fees in connection with the international investigation of Swiss banks, lend credence to many of his charges.
On a broader level, Finkelstein is justified in questioning the authenticity of the emotional and other claims staked by Holocaust keepers of the flame. The memory of this singular event has too often been soiled by vulgarity, political calculation, hypocrisy and greed. Former Israeli Foreign Secretary Abba Eban long ago observed: "There's no business like Shoah business." But Finkelstein's swings are so wild and his tone so vitriolic as to raise doubts about his agenda, and even about that which may lie deeper in his heart.
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 bête noire of Finkelstein, says that it distributed approximately $220 million to individual survivors in 1999 alone.
Other Finkelstein generalizations are as absurd as they are sweeping, and do a great disservice to the serious and enlightening scholarship that has been produced by Holocaust writers over the past 40 years. Thus Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's "Hitler's Willing Executioners," which explains the extermination of the Jews as an outgrowth of purely German anti-Semitism, Finkelstein asserts, is "standard Holocaust dogma," when in fact it has been furiously disputed by other Holocaust historians. "Fragments," the wholly fictitious account of a child survivor by Binjamin Wilkormirski, Finkelstein adds, is "the archetypal Holocaust memoir," ignoring major contributions from survivors such as Primo Levi ("The Drowned and the Saved") and German Jewish observers like Victor Klemperer ("I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years"), both published when the so-called Holocaust industry was supposedly in full flourish.
An ideologue of the left, Finkelstein takes predictable swipes at the "criminal policies of the Israeli state," backed, naturally, by an imperialist U.S. foreign policy. Never mind that U.S. administrations and Jewish interest groups in fact have often been at odds, especially during the Bush administration, Finkelstein insists on seeing "elites" everywhere, notably those of the Jewish persuasion, "marching in lockstep with American power." These elites, the hidden hand of "organized American Jewry" behind the Holocaust industry, have one goal: not the teaching of history but the furthering of "Jewish aggrandizement."
Finkelstein employs such sentiments and language, so associated with standard anti-Semitism, quite freely. Not only might historical anti-Semitism be "grounded in a real conflict of interests" (a classic formulation of Stalinesque leftism), but the Jews, in Finkelstein's view, are often to blame for it. The pursuit of reparations, in another of Finkelstein's wild and baseless charges, "has become the main fomenter of anti-Semitism in Europe." His assertions become ever more rancid: Israelis and American Jews are nowadays the great oppressors -- "lording it over those least able to defend themselves" -- the former over Palestinians, the latter over American blacks. Holocaust denial is also the fault of the Jews. "Given the nonsense churned out daily by the Holocaust Industry," Finkelstein writes, "the wonder is that there are so few skeptics."
Finkelstein is quick to remind us of his credentials as a child of survivors. Nevertheless his distrust of and distaste for his co-religionists are rather apparent. In a telephone interview with a British publication recently he said: "I'm not exaggerating when I say that one out of three Jews you stop in the street in New York will claim to be a survivor." Particularly irksome are those "arriviste and shtetl-chauvinist Jews of Eastern European descent like New York City mayor Edward Koch and (former) New York Times Executive Editor A.M. Rosenthal," whom Finkelstein holds largely responsible for the Holocaust industry and all its foul works.
In the end, Finkelstein acknowledges the "staggering dimensions of Hitler's Final Solution," seeking merely to restore the phenomenon "as a rational subject of inquiry." But what we have here, ultimately, is a rather rancid settling of personal and ideological scores. How that furthers rational inquiry is hard to see. And if truly, as he states at the very end, he wishes for nothing more than for the vanquished to "finally, rest in peace," he might ask himself how his own rage and dogma will help them achieve that.
http://archive.salon.com/books/review/2000/08/30/finkelstein/index.html

**

DISTORTION OF JUDGEMENT
The Holocaust Industry
Norman G Finklestein
With this book Norman Finkelstein attempts 'to represent my parents' legacy'. Since his parents were Holocaust survivors, that is a stern task.
Finkelstein has garnered enormous publicity for his argument that the real danger to the memory of Nazism's victims comes not from the Holocaust deniers but from the 'prominent, self proclaimed guardians of Holocaust memory'. He argues that the horror of Hitler's death camps has been subsumed by an ideology constructed by a 'Holocaust industry' that has hijacked the memory of those who were murdered in order to boost the state of Israel, and the role it plays in aiding US imperial domination of the Middle East.
A second theme of Finkelstein's argument is that the ideological construct of the 'Holocaust industry' has been used to justify the shift to the right among US Jews in the years since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, with opposition to their politics being declared 'anti-Semitic'.
Finally he denounces as a 'double shakedown' recent efforts to win compensation, particularly from Swiss banks and German companies, for Holocaust survivors. According to Finkelstein, most survivors' claims were settled after the war. It is, he says, the lawyers and the institutions of the 'Holocaust industry', rather than the survivors, who have been the main beneficiaries of the settlements reached in the late 1990s. Tragically, Finkelstein's years of political confrontation with the pro-Israeli Jewish establishment in the US have distorted his judgement and produced a book that does more harm than good.
Finkelstein does have some insights into the way the Holocaust has been used in Jewish, Israeli and US politics over the last 50 years, but these are lost amidst the author's provocations and polemic, and he condemns the outpouring of work on the Holocaust in recent years. Books, films and the construction of new museums on the Holocaust are scathingly dismissed. 'Too many public and private resources have been invested in memorialising the Nazi genocide,' writes Finkelstein. 'Most of the output is worthless, a tribute not to Jewish suffering but to Jewish aggrandisement.'
It is true that the hardline Zionists have increasingly cited the Holocaust as an excuse for the violence and terror meted out by the Israeli state. It is true that hypocritical politicians will appear at Holocaust memorials and then go away and play the race card. But it is also true that the memory of the Holocaust is the biggest barrier to the rebirth of a modern Nazi movement.
Finkelstein seems unaware that one major explanation for the growth of Holocaust studies and memorials has been as a reaction to the growth of new Nazi movements around the world. He has clearly forgotten Jörg Haider's malevolent influence on the Austrian government, or French Nazi leader Le Pen's remark that the Holocaust was 'a mere detail of history', or the recent murderous Nazi attacks on Jews in Germany. He also defends free speech for Holocaust deniers, and attacks those who expose them for giving publicity to 'obscure cranks'. He tells us the Nazi historian David Irving has made an 'indispensable' contribution to our knowledge of the Second World War. This is the David Irving who sees himself as the intellectual leader of Europe's new Nazis, and who was shown during his recent libel trial to be a systematic falsifier of history.
Unlike Finkelstein I have no Holocaust survivors in my family. In the 1930s my mother's family lived in London's East End, where they were involved in the fight against Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts. My father's family lived in Germany before the war. Some made it out by 1939, others simply disappeared. While I was reading Finkelstein's book my parents were sorting out the papers of an 88 year old fellow refugee.
The letters reveal the horror of living under Nazi rule before the Holocaust, and the racism and cynical hypocrisy of the politicians who talked about tolerance but slammed the doors in the face of those fleeing oppression. My parents hope the correspondence will find a home in one of the Holocaust museums--probably one that Finkelstein condemns--either in Britain or Berlin. This will not be an act of Jewish aggrandisement, but their memorial to a victim of the Nazis.
There is an important history to be written about the Jews, racism and politics after the Holocaust. It would have to begin with the physical destruction of the anti-Zionist socialist tradition among Jews in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. It would have to talk about the cynical way the Allies refused to bomb the gas chambers even though they knew what was going on there. It would have to deal with the failure of much of the leadership of world Jewry to fight for an open door policy for refugees before the war, and for rescue during the conflict. It would have to discuss the very real anti-Semitism which existed among the political elite worldwide before and after 1945, and the confusion caused by Stalin's rush to recognise the state of Israel even though the country was born amidst the ethnic cleansing of up to 1 million Palestinians. It would have to explain the politics of the Cold War and the changing strategies of imperialism in the Middle East.
Only in this context is it possible to discuss the way the Holocaust has been used by certain sections of the Jewish establishment to defend the indefensible. Finkelstein makes only passing references to this history.
Quoting his mother Finkelstein says, 'The time is long past to open our hearts to the rest of humanity's sufferings.' Unfortunately his book offers no help to those who are today fighting humanity's sufferings.
Mike Simons
http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/sr244/books.htm

**

 

Topolm

“Was National Socialism as an economic system efficient? Yes. You had better believe it”

Just reading over and was struck by your comments on Nazis economics sorry but as anyone whose done any study of the Third Reich will tell you Nazis Germany was an economic basket case.

A recent book will put you right - THE WAGES OF DESTRUCTION: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze

 

Balbus... It's pretty obvious that you and some others here are desperately trying to steer people away from this book...What are you so afraid of??? You post non-academic reviews of the book. They are not valid by any means FYI.
It's just sad that you dont want others to think for themselves or more particularly, you dont trust people to come to a conclusion that deviates from your flawed paradigm. I apologize in advance for intellectually slapping you around, but what choice do I have...
========================================================
Raul Hilberg, author of the classic The Destruction of the European Jews, is the world's leading authority on the Nazi holocaust. A Brazilian journalist, Carlos Haag, questioned him about The Holocaust Industry. Below is Hilberg's reply:

Raul Hilberg: To say that the Holocaust has been used in order to secure Palestine for the Jews is nothing new and we know how important it was in the creation of Israel. Nevertheless it will be a bitter yet necessary reminder to the community. He is also right when he argues that nobody talked about this topic in the USA: in 1968 a well known local encyclopedia asked me to write an article on the Holocaust and they only wanted me to talk about Dachau and Buchenwald because they were not interested in Auschwitz; these topics were censored. I agree with him that people overestimate the number of survivors and that the concept itself is ill-defined - it includes not only the victims of the camps - and it is true that there an exaggerated number of compensation requests are made.

There is something radically wrong in this exploitation because it is an issue that should not be used to make money and I must confess that I found the whole affair with the Swiss banks disturbing. The Jewish-American community is very prosperous and there is no reason for them to ask the Swiss for money. That seems obscene to me."

Q: Professor Hilberg, you are one of the most prominent historians on the Holocaust. Your book, "The Destruction of the European Jews," is unanimously considered a masterpiece. So it would be very important for our listeners to have your comment on Professor Finkelstein¹s book, since it is pretty controversial.

Raul Hilberg: Well, to be honest I wish it were longer. It's a very small book. It may not be apparent but one needs a background to understand what it says. Consequently I think it is very useful but not very easy reading for those who are not familiar with what he is writing about.

Q: Professor Hilberg, generally speaking would you agree with Professor Finkelstein when he denounces the American Jewish organizations and some class-action suit lawyers for "extorting" money from Europe in order to let's say "make a killing"?

Raul Hilberg: I would in substance agree with what he says because I have said much the same things myself and the methods of the World Jewish Congress and some other organizations or people allied with it in his campaign I feel are detestable. I don't subscribe to them. In sum and substance I agree with what Finkelstein says.

Q: Don't you believe that this book could be dangerous, that it could be used by some anti-Semitic extremists, by some neo-Nazi groups for anti-Semitic purposes?

Raul Hilberg: Well, even if they do use it in that fashion, I¹m afraid that when it comes to the truth, it has to be said openly, without regard to any consequences that would be undesirable, embarrassing. The fact is that we have now crossed a line, we have seen an action that I personally cannot defend in terms of the tactics and also of the sums of money involved in the claims against not only the Swiss Banks but now extensively in other matters as well.

Q: Norman Finkelstein accuses US Jewish institutions - in particular, the Jewish Claims Conference (JCC) - of extorting moneys in the name of "needy Holocaust survivors." Is this criticism shared by others?

Raul Hilberg: Finkelstein criticizes the Jewish organizations as an outsider. However, there are also conservative Jews who oppose the reparation payments, and there is also criticism that money is not distributed to survivors, for example, in Commentary , the periodical of the American Jewish Committee. In the September 2000 issue, Gabriel Schoenfeld called the present situation concerning reparations a "growing scandal".

Q: But Finkelstein himself is a non-person in the USA.

Raul Hilberg: Yes, because it is held against him that he compares the fate of the Jews with the Palestinians, who were expelled by the Israelis. American Jews can*t stand that. In addition, he wrote the book, A Nation on Trial (together with Ruth Bettina Birn ), in which Daniel Goldhagen*s book, Hitler*s Willing Executions , is criticized. Goldhagen is very popular in the US, even though his scholarly standard is at the level of 1946. But Goldhagen gave vent to a repressed anger of American Jews, which is aimed at present against all sorts of states and organizations in Europe.

Q: But the situation of American Jews today can*t be compared to the past situation of Jews in Europe.

Raul Hilberg: This is correct. The American Jewish community is the wealthiest and most successful in the world. Already ten years ago there were 18 Jewish billionaires, now there are many more. One of them is Edgar Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) and one of the main shareholders of Seagrams. These people could put an end to poverty among Holocaust survivors within one week.

Q: What is the importance of the Holocaust in the US today?

Raul Hilberg: Many intellectuals in the US use the Holocaust to get positions at universities or museums. The German Studies Association - an association of American scholars specializing in German culture - has been around for decades. But students were not interested in post-war Germany. Only when the Holocaust was discovered as a topic - this happened 15, 20 years ago - did the association begin to blossom. Today there are hundreds of courses on the Holocaust in the US. And when scholars want to get a teaching position or publish a book, it works best if the topic is the Holocaust. The same is true for newspapers. If I am listening to "Deutsche Welle" [a German radio program], I experience a totally different Germany than when I am reading the New York Times .

Q: The campaign against the Swiss banks was also aimed at shoveling money into US coffers, Finkelstein says.

Raul Hilberg: The WJC*s move against the Swiss banks was essentially a clash between American and European culture. In Europe, class-action lawsuits of the type used against the Swiss are unknown. In the US they are common, for instance, against the tobacco industry. The WJC and the lawyers told the Swiss banks: You won*t be able to do business in the US if you don*t pay $20 billion. In the US one knows that this is only an initial threat, but the Swiss were shocked.

Q: But there were dormant accounts which belonged to Holocaust victims.

Raul Hilberg: But not worth $20 billion. In the 1930s, Jews were poor. My family belonged to the middle class, but we did not have a bank account in Austria, let alone in Switzerland. In most of the dormant accounts only a few thousands francs were left. The really rich Jews could escape abroad or their heirs have long since claimed the moneys.

Q: Weren*t these the findings of the Volcker committee, which was supposed to clarify matters?

Raul Hilberg: The current value of the moneys in the dormant Jewish accounts is far less than the $1.25 billion paid by the Swiss. And the investigation itself cost at least 250 millions - lawyers and accountants made a lot of money. But after the Volcker report was published, it would have been embarrassing for the Swiss to say: We paid too much. At that time, I told three newspapers - Weltwoche (Switzerland), Forum (Austria), and Haaretz (Israel) - that this was blackmail. The coalition of claimants did not try to silence me. These people were presumably afraid to lose such a fight.

Q: But Finkelstein*s main allegation is that the money - half of which the Swiss bankers have already paid out - doesn*t go to the account owners.

Raul Hilberg: It takes a long time until a judge can come to a decision about the distribution of moneys. One part of the moneys should go to account holders or their heirs; one part to forced laborers employed by companies which had accounts in Switzerland or companies which had invested in Switzerland; and one part to refugees who were refused entry at the border. It is difficult to clarify the details.

Q: And what remains for the organizations?

Raul Hilberg: According to the agreement with the banks nothing should go to Jewish organizations and their own projects, but they are already queuing up to get money for educational purposes and memorials.

Q: Why weren*t similar measures taken against American banks, where moneys from Holocaust victims were also deposited?

Raul Hilberg: This is just starting. There are also suits against Israeli banks. But presumably the net result will be that there are as small sums to be found as in the Swiss accounts.

Q: Why are these demands, as well as the demands to compensate forced labors, being made at such a late date?

Raul Hilberg: During the Cold War the US had to show consideration for its allies. For this reason, no questions concerning Turkish collaboration with the Nazis are raised to this day - because Turkey is an important ally of the US and Israel. But in Europe Jewish organizations can nowadays collect money without jeopardizing the security of the US. I personally would like to know why the WJC has hardly put any pressure on Austria, even as leading Nazis and SS leaders were Austrians, Hitler included.

Q: What do you think is the reason?

Raul Hilberg: Immediately after the war, the US wanted to make the Russians withdraw from Austria, and the Russians wanted to keep Austria neutral, therefore there was a common interest to grant Austria victim status. And later Austria could cry poor - though its per capita income is as high as Germany*s. And, most importantly, the Austrian PR machinery works better. Austria has the opera ball, the imperial castle, Mozartkugeln [a chocolate]. Americans like that. And Austrians invest and export relatively little to the US, therefore they are less vulnerable to blackmail. In the meantime, they set up a commission in Austria to clarify what happened to Jewish property. Victor Klima, the former chancellor, has asked me to join. My father fought for Austria in the First World War and in 1939 he was kicked out of Austria. After the war they offered him ten dollars per month as compensation. For this reason I told Klima, no thank you, this makes me sick.

Q: Another issue is the number of Holocaust survivors because this is used as a basis for allocating compensation.

Raul Hilberg: First of all, it is difficult to define who counts as a Holocaust survivor. Somebody who was in Auschwitz or hiding in the woods counts. But somebody who was living undetected in a Paris apartment or was married to a non-Jew? Or somebody who could emigrate to the US? I would not think so.

Q: During the last round of negotiations, the Jewish slave-laborers were the main issue. The JCC spoke of 400,000 Jewish slave-laborers surviving in concentration camps and 300,000 in camps in Eastern Europe. Reference was made to your book.

Raul Hilberg: I never presented such figures. In 1945 many Jews were transferred from one camp to another. There were different camps, like Bergen-Belsen and Mauthausen, or small sub-camps, for instance Grindlitz, where Oskar Schindler kept his Jews. Therefore, it is irresponsible to present exact figures to the media.

Q: You once said that quality control is missing in Holocaust studies.

Raul Hilberg: That is correct, in particular, in respect to several of the elite universities. This is the only reason why Goldhagen could obtain a PhD in political science at Harvard. There was nobody on the faculty who could have checked his work.

Q: Salomon Korn, a representative of the Jewish community in Germany and a member of the JCC, sees the problem not in Finkelstein's theses but in the German debate of them.

Raul Hilberg: There is one taboo in Germany: Germans must not attack Jews. That is the reason why such coverage is given to a Jew attacking another Jew. But only when this taboo is broken will Germany be really emancipated.

 

Topolm

This peice is about the compensation asked for by American Jews it has nothing to do with the holocaust being in some way ‘Israel’s greatest weapon’ or with relegating the holocaust in some league table of death.

Hilberg might agree with Finkelstein in that department but then in part so do I. But that doesn’t mean I agree with some of your viewpoints, as I have tried to explained, and which you seem to be evading.

So what is YOUR point, what are YOU trying to say and are you going to actually explain YOUR views in YOUR OWN WORDS.

 

My views are in line with Finkelstein's given his scholarly work. Read the book and you will know my position with profound clarity. There is really nothing more to add...Dont know why you are beating a dead horse...A bit strange if I might say...

 

LOL

Your views are exactly the same as Finkelstein's you have no other views on this subject expect those expressed my Finkelstein? You think just like him with no hint of dissent on anything?

Is this what you call critical thought?

 

Topolms views can be easily read and thought through. If he wraps them in a book that people online are unlikely to read, (I am at least) critique is much more difficult.

 

Oh BTW, I think someone said that Stalins killings of christians aristocrats and political enemies, wasn't genocide.

That's right, they aren't a race, so it doesn't fit the denotation of genocide. But the Genocide Convention does make clear that crimes of mass politicide with the intention of killing all opponents and families or intentional killing of all religious groups to be considered as genocide under international law.

 

The communists were of course committing highly coordinated genocide against ethnic slavs (russians) who were racially white.

Why dont you read Stalin's Willing Executioners

Additionally, are you saying that Jews are a race??? Are you saying that they were targeted in WWII because of their race??? Did a very quick search in google... here is one link that says they are not... I personally DO NOT KNOW...

http://judaism.about.com/od/abcsofjudaism/a/beingjewish.htm

 

Jews are considered an ethno-religious group by most. Judaism is a religion and Jewish is an ethnic group. You could group them in with other ethnic groups which some researchers have done.

http://www.science.co.il/Israel-history.asp

http://www.shamash.org/lists/scj-faq/HTML/faq/10-11.html

http://www.jewfaq.org/whoisjew.htm

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/whojew1.html

http://www.whoisajew.com/

Many people in Europe during the middle age were targeted for being secular jews. You can't be a secular christian, or a secular muslim, how can you be a secular jew?

I don't see why you would argue such a basic issue. If you wanted to make an educated argument that Jewish were not a sperate identity from related ethnic groups that would be fine, but many people consider jewish an ethnicity, and denying that it is a common belief among jewish people, non jewish people and researchers is pointless.

Yes the Jewish were targeted for their race, making it a genocide in strict literal definitions. Anyone secular who had jewish ancestory was targeted for ethnic slaughter.

Do you even read what you type?