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Norman G. Finkelstein

The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering Paperback – January 6, 2015

by Norman G. Finkelstein (Author)

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In his iconoclastic and controversial study, Norman G. Finkelstein moves from an interrogation of the place the Holocaust has come to occupy in global culture to a disturbing examination of recent Holocaust compensation settlements. 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 has today.

Recalling Holocaust fraudsters such as Jerzy Kosiński 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 from some of the very people who profess most passionately to defend it. Drawing on a wealth of untapped sources, he exposes the double shakedown of European countries and legitimate Jewish claimants, and concludes that the Holocaust industry has become an outright extortion racket.

Print length

304 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Verso
Publication date

January 6, 2015
Dimensions

5.06 x 0.77 x 7.77 inches
ISBN-10

1781685614
ISBN-13

978-1781685617
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“The most controversial book of the year.” —Guardian

“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

“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.” —The Times

“Finkelstein has raised some important and uncomfortable issues.” —Jewish Quarterly

“Into this minefield, through which most have trodden perhaps a little too gingerly, has bust Norman Finkelstein, a Jew and a self-professed iconoclast, heretic and enemy of the American-Jewish establishment – and he is lobbing grenades.” —Spectator

“A short, sharp, and copiously noted polemic.” —Times Higher Educational Supplement

“Finkelstein is at his best when he skewers those who would sacralize the Holocaust.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

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

“Clever, explosive, sometimes even wryly funny.” —Salon

“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

“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

“Finkelstein should be credited for writing a well-researched book that can help shut down the Holocaust Industry when the public becomes aware of its dishonesty and its vulgar exploitation of Jewish suffering.” —Z Magazine

“The reality of the Nazi holocaust remains. Memory can still enable us to recognise new victims, extend sensitivity and monitor signs of impending genocide. Books like The Holocaust Industry can help us if we let them.” —Red Pepper

About the Author

Norman G. Finkelstein taught political theory and the Israel–Palestine conflict for many years. He is the author of eight books, which have been translated into more than forty foreign editions, including What Gandhi Says; This Time We Went Too Far; Beyond Chutzpah; and Image and Reality of the Israel–Palestine Conflict.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Verso; Reprint edition (January 6, 2015)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1781685614
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1781685617
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.06 x 0.77 x 7.77 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #211,795 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #109 in Jewish Social Studies
- #228 in Israel & Palestine History (Books)
- #302 in Middle Eastern Politics

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Rasputin

Somebody needed to say it

Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2020

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Finkelstein is a Jewish political scientist who was drummed out of academia for being critical of Zionism. In this volume Finkelstein dares to take on the Holocaust, probably the most sacralized subject in the modern Western world. And we should be grateful to Finkelstein because this is a subject that was overdue for discussion and one can only imagine what would have happened if a Gentile had tried to write something like this.

It is important to realize this book is not a work of Holocaust revisionism. Finkelstein takes the standard history as given and instead deals with the use and abuse of tragedy for political and financial advantage. The core of the book is only three chapters. Although the main text is brief, it’s clear Finkelstein has read very widely and he engages substantively with numerous sources. Each page is heavily footnoted with citations and additional commentary.

Finkelstein points out that the Holocaust is an unusual tragedy in that it has increased in importance and received more attention over time. This is the precise opposite of what usually happens: the memory of an event is typically vivid in the immediate aftermath and then fades over time. Finkelstein suggests that the key point for the change was 1967, after the Six-Day War. He suggests that the Holocaust was given much greater emphasis after that at that time primarily to deflect criticism from Israel and secondarily because of the new era of identity politics. While one can debate these reasons, empirically he seems correct about the timing. If you check the Google n-gram for “the Holocaust,” you will see the term was virtually non-existent in the 50s but start taking off in the 70s and 80s. By the early 90s we had an official Holocaust museum in DC, we had Schindler’s List and many other movies, we had kids reading Anne Frank in school, and on and on. By now, the Holocaust has come to dominate WWII entirely rather than being a secondary story as it was for a couple decades after the war.

After these broader introductory points, Finkelstein moves on to more specific criticisms. He discusses dubious memoirs by such people as Kosinski and Wilkomirski and goes after Elie Weisel. This is pretty good, although surely there are more literary hoaxes than the few he mentions.

The final chapter is the truly extraordinary story of the shakedown of the Swiss. Finkelstein goes into some detail about the case and how various Jewish groups, using the US as the muscle, bullied the Swiss into paying out an amount in the billions for supposed lost bank accounts that might have belonged to Jews. All accumulated with interest of course! “It’s not about money. It’s about more money.”

Finkelstein brilliantly notes how actual Jewish survivors of the camps could not have been more than 100,000 at the end of the war and that actuarially there would perhaps remain only a quarter of them by the year 2000 (and hardly any by now). Yet when it comes to these shakedown schemes, they will claim far higher numbers which Finkelstein notes is ironically a sort of implicit Holocaust denial. At any rate, because there are few genuine camp survivors, all the shakedown money ends up going to the “Jewish community” at large, i.e., slush funds for these Jewish groups.

As I read, I could not help but compare these extraordinary demands for restitution to how harshly the Zionists have dealt with the Palenstinian situation. Finkelstein is tremendously well-read on Israel and I wish he had explored this contrast (hypocrisy). Over its history Israel has made numerous illegal terroritorial acquisitions and used terrorism to force Arabs to leave (search for “Deir Yassin” for example). Israel has intransigently refused to grant repatriation of the Arab refugees and compensation. In their minds they owe NOTHING to the people they directly abused yet they expect restitution down to the last gold dental filling. The reality is that in human history the ledger of grievances is very lengthy and it’s impossible to adjudicate who owes what to whom. If you go back further to before the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, you will learn that Jews owned about a third of the real property in the Reich, and the bulk of this was acquired opportunistically during the hyperinflation of the Weimar period. But of course the reparations door only swings one way.

This book is still very relevant as Jewish groups are trying to shake down Poland, alleging that they are entitled to reclaim all the land they owned there before the war.

If Finkelstein does another edition, I think a chapter on Hollywood would be a good addition.

53 people found this helpful

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George S.

Finkelstein is BRILLIANT

Reviewed in the United States on December 22, 2019

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The book gives a lot of insight into, yes, the exploitation of the Nazi holocaust for financial and political gain, but also into the relationship between the United States and Israel, and how Israel behaves as the representative of all Jewish people, whether they like it or not. It's a mini-treatise on corruption, politics, exacting research, and the necessity of questioning and discovering for oneself because of the disastrous consequences that arise when people fear open discussion for the possibility of being offensive and take everything at face value. This book will anger you. Finkelstein, the son of Holocaust survivors himself and fierce critic of Zionism exposes fraud and exploitation for which those most vulnerable must bear the cost. Finkelstein himself will inspire you as someone who is commited to truth and justice in a situation where that excludes the potential for personal gain. Overall, it's an exceptional book by an exceptional man.

19 people found this helpful

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Robert Ahrens

Thought provoking

Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2018

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This is obviously a contentious work but it's well argued, thoroughly researched and exhaustively footnoted. I am definitely inspired to learn more about these topics. That the author has been pilloried in the US academic community only increases my suspicion that his claims are well founded.

44 people found this helpful

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Jerry

Brave man

Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2018

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A lot of good research in this book. How unfortunate that a tragedy like the Holocaust was used for financial gain

24 people found this helpful

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Graveyard Dave

BLASTING AWAY AT THOSE THAT USE MISERY TO MAKE MONEY

Reviewed in the United States on July 3, 2020

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If you're looking for an off-hand dismissal of the suffering and destruction wrought by the Holocaust, then this book is not for you. If you are, rather, searching for a thoughtful deconstruction of those who use the death camps, the systemic slaughter of various peoples deemed 'unfit' or 'subhuman' as an excuse to pad their own bank accounts, garner sympathy while utilizing neo-apartheid tactics to commit genocide and steal land from another group of people, and condemning anyone who questions the slightest vague memory of 'things that happened' a VIRULENT ANTI-SEMITIC NEO-NAZI FASCIST... why are these groups, foundations, coalitions and fund-raising organization so dead-set on denying any and all innocent inquiries and attempts to reconcile contradictory views? Enter Mr. Finkelstein - his parents fled the spreading Nazi terror, but lost most everyone unlucky enough to get caught up in the death machine that rolled across Europe from the mid-1930s until the mid-40s... Friends, Relatives, Neighbors, Co-Workers, Nodding Acquaintances - all disappeared and gone forever in the space of less than a decade. Those who escaped - now referred to as 'survivors' - did not speak of the horror (and if they did, it was in hushed, secretive words) until the early 1970s (a fact displayed via painstaking, thorough evidence of mention of the 'devouring' - to use Romani parlance - in the media from the time immediately preceding the full exposure of Nazi Genocidal Atrocities up until the 1980s or so). Then, it appears, the shame and nightmarish brutalities visited upon entire communities were seen in a different light - the light of the Almighty Capitalist Dollar. I am not in any way capable of drawing out the duplicitous avarice and manipulative machinations employed in order to wring every last tear and - more importantly - every last dime from the soft 'marks' that are so easily bilked while the real victims remain forgotten and left to be scattered in the indifferent winds. A very important volume for those who wish to understand the realities of war, the manipulation of public opinion, journalistic integrity and the (at times purposeful) failings of memory - especially when those shortcomings extend to the perception of accepted 'History.'

6 people found this helpful

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Margit Alm

Comment on the book

Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2017

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This whole story is of course by now 'dated'. At the time I read articles about it here and there, but this book brings it altogether and highlights the sheer arrogance of what Finkelstein calls organized American Judaism, but I prefer to call it organized American Zionism, as I distinguish between Judaism the religion and Zionism the political movement, even though the latter appears to have taken on religious overtones.

27 people found this helpful

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Ms. Erica Wildwood

Everyone should read this book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 12, 2020

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Yesterday my newspaper featured a Jewish comedian who had met a holocaust denier. The BBC filmed this and it will be shown shortly. Today the paper printed a letter praising the comedian for his "bravery" in "sticking his head above the parapet". This ludicrous sentiment shows how the holocaust industry has cast the Jews (actually the most powerful ethnic minority in the world) as eternal victims, and how it pretends that holocaust deniers, a minuscule and long discedited minority, represent a danger to Jews, therefore justifying the existence of Israel as a "safe haven", and ignoring its racist and terrorist policies and practices.
In actual fact, there cannot be many people who haven't had the holocaust rammed down their throats in school. Holocaust memorial day is observed in every country in the western world, there is a holocaust museum in every major city in America, and the holocaust industry is worth billions. So the person who actually did stick his head above the parapet is Norman Finkelstein who wrote this deeply shocking but hardly surprising book.
The holocaust industry minimises the suffering of non-Jews in WW2. I was born in Holland 10 years after the end of the war. My parents suffered horribly in the bombardment of Roterdam, the occupation, and the Hunger Winter of 1944-45, at the end of which my mother had a baby that only lived for 10 days. But how many people have even heard of the Hunger Winter? What the war in Holland means to the rest of the world is limited to the story of Anne Frank, who is regarded as a secular saint. (Actually, she wasn't a very nice person, and certainly not heroic. The heroes were the Dutch gentiles who risked their lives to support her and her family. Can you name even one? Thought not.)
It keeps getting worse. Any criticism of Israel is now conflated with anti-semitism, and this was used to demonise the Labour party in the recent general election. Ken Livingstone was hounded out of office for making a historically accurate remark ("even Hitler supported Zionism before he went mad.") Meanwhile, Israel continues to flout international law, to steal ancestral Palestinian land for Lebensraum, and to treat Palestinians as Untermenschen. It has declared itself a Jewish state (imagine if we declared ourselves an Anglo-Saxon state! I also remember another state with an ambition to be racially pure - Aryan, in that particular case.)
This is a brave and necessary book. Predictably, Finklestein has been utterly vilified for it. It exposes the hypocrisy and double standards that rule our world (When is terrorism not terrorism? When it's carried out by America or Israel). This book ought to be widely known and read, but of course it isn't. I came across it quite accidentally - and serendipitously.
By the way, in the 60s, before the 1967 war, we all admired Israel as a brave new socialist country, and in Holland most of my generation aspired to spend time working on a kibbutz. How idealistic and naive we were then. And how far Israel has lurched to the right since then.

55 people found this helpful

Scriptwriter

Provocative and detailed

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 8, 2020

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In this densely argued and extensively footnoted work, author Norman Finkelstein lays out the case in great detail – albeit in 150 short pages – that the use of the Nazi Holocaust as a historical event, has become an industry, subject to overt political usage and economic gain.

That the state of Israel brandishes the Holocaust to silence criticism and smears dissenters as anti-Semites, is obvious and does not need a book length treatise. The Holocaust Industry dives deep in to something much more insidious: that use of the holocaust is invoked by the West (and specifically the United States) only when it is politically convenient to do so e.g. the Holocaust was invoked when boat people were fleeing official enemies of the United States, such as Communist Vietnam or Saddam-era Iraq; when the refugees are fleeing murderous US-backed death squads in Haiti or Indonesia, this memory is not invoked.

Finkelstein lays out how this situation has come about since the 1940s through to present day: how the Holocaust has been politically convenient to ignore or remember depending on who the aggressor is but equally appalling, how organisations have used the Holocaust to “shakedown” countries who harboured pre-War Jewish wealth, using grossly exaggerated numbers and political intimidation – and then targeting countries that were politically convenient to do so. Much of this wealth that that has been repatriated has not gone back to the actual Holocaust victims but instead has been usurped by organisations to achieve certain “community” goals (Finkelstein also takes issue with the numbers used regarding Jewish Holocaust survivors, which, he argues, have been greatly inflated).

The Holocaust Industry is undoubtedly a provocative book that will prove incendiary for some. However, Finkelstein argues his case persuasively, using extensive notes and references. If you are interested in the political use of history, a student or teacher of the Holocaust, or someone with a general interest in the ramifications of World War II, this is a stimulating and well-researched text.

11 people found this helpful

Dzerzhinsky

Uncomfortable truths combined with unique insight

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 24, 2018

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Finkelstein's meticulous research presented in 'The Holocaust Industry' was endorsed by the late Dr Raul Hilberg, widely considered to be the world's preeminent scholar of the Nazi genocide. The extent of the 'double shakedown' visited upon Holocaust survivors by Zionist organisations and their representatives is dexterously outlined to the reader. Finkelstein's work provides uncomfortable truths for some when combined with his own unique familial insight into a place in history where many fear to venture. 'The Holocaust Industry' is a serious milestone in the Shoah narrative and it will continue to act as a bulwark against revisionism.

Highly recommended to those who value truth, justice, and indeed history.
I have given 5 stars.

The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering

18 people found this helpful

Naheem

Highly recommended

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 8, 2019

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Wow. Some really interesting points especially the evolution of the relationship between USA and Israel and the way holocaust was viewed in the immediate post war period. Interesting that the holocaust gained more importance in America as and when the USA Israel alliance became more and more prominent.

7 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

A must read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 12, 2018

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And well done Norman Finkelstein for this second edition covering more issues on this tragic subject. The man is an absolute shinning light in a world of dark.

10 people found this helpful

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