"I cannot help but see this extermination pride as another variant
of the Covenant. This time the Chosen People have been chosen for extraordinary
suffering. As such, the Holocaust seems simply another opportunity for
Jewish chauvinism. I grew up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, surrounded by
this chauvinist tendency, which expresses itself in an insecure need to
boast about Jewish achievement in every field, the other side which was
a contempt for non-Jews, the gentile."
Philip Lopate,
Jewish author,
in Testimony. Contemporary Writers Make the Holocaust Personal,
1989, p. 299
"The
'Holocaust' is the Jews' special thing. It is what sets them apart from others while giving them a claim upon others. That
is why Jews insist on the 'uniqueness' of the Holocaust."
Rabbi Jacob Neusner,
A 'Holocaust' Primer. National Review, August 3, 1979, p. 978]
"Let us be frank.
National priority and national uniquity (uniqueness) are both covert claims
to superiority, parallel paths to the same summit, and that summit is
what [Robert] Merton calls 'ethnocentric glory ... Like social class symbols,
cultural symbols serve 'to influence in a desired direction other persons'
judgments' of the group that is the symbol's carrier."
John Murray Cuddihy,
The Holocaust: The Latent Issue in the Uniqueness Debate.
[in Gallagher, Philip E., Ed; Christians, Jews, and Other Worlds. Patterns
of Conflict and Accomodation. Lanham, NY/London, 1988,
p. 74, 75
"The
genocidal policies of the Nazis resulted in the deaths of about as many
Polish Gentiles as Polish Jews.... this [Polish Gentile] holocaust has
been largely ignored because historians who have written on the subject
of the Holocaust have chosen to interpret the tragedy in exclusivist terms
-- namely, the as the most tragic period in the history of the Jewish
Diaspora. To them, the Holocaust was unique to Jews, and they therefore
have had little or nothing to say about the nine million Gentiles, including
three million Poles, who also perished in the greatest tragedy the world
has ever known."
Richard Lukas,
The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation, 1939-1944,
University of Kentucky Press,
p. ix
"The
director of one Holocaust center referred to me as a troublemaker; another
writer on the Holcaust called my discussion of the Romani case [i.e.,
the mass murder of Gypsys] in the Jewish context 'loathesome.' A representative
of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, whom I have never met,
told a researcher who called to find out how to find me that I was a 'wild
man.' People have walked out when it was my turn to speak at conferences
about the Porrajmos [the Gypsy 'Holocaust'], and one former professor
at the university where I teach adamantly refused even to MENTION Roma
and Sinti in his regular course on the Holocaust. There is an element
of racism evident in the Jewish response; after all, Gypsies are a 'third
world people of color' ... At one presentation I gave at a Hillel Center,
I was interrupted by a woman who leaped to her feet and angrily demanded
why I was even comparing the Gypsy case to the Jewish case when Jews had
given so much to the world and Gypsies were merely parasites and thieves.
On another occasion a gentleman stood up and declared that he would never
buy a book on the Holocaust written by a Gypsy."
Ian Hancock,
a professor at the University of Texas of Gypsy heritage,
Responses to the Romani Holocaust, in Rosenbaum, A. Is the Holocaust
Unique?, Westview Press, 1996
p. 55-57
"The Holocaust industry has reduced the memory of
the Jewish people's suffering to that of
a Monte Carlo casino."
Norman Finkelstein,
quoted by
Wilbert A. Tatum,
The Holocaust Industry, New York Amsterdam News, 9-27-00, p. 1
|
Kindertransport' Broadens View of Holocaust. Movie review.
Sacramento Bee [California] May 11, 2001
"There's a
feeling in Hollywood that if you've made a documentary that's been nominated
for an Oscar and you're up against a film about the Holocaust, your
movie doesn't have a chance of winning."
Auschwitz and the Professors,
by Gabriel Schoenfeld. Commentary. June
1998
"Already, in American high schools, the Holocaust has taken its
place alongside such other causes du jour as values enhancement and
AIDS prevention. Already, in American popular culture, the Holocaust
is rapidly replacing Christmas as a marketable icon of man's humanity
to man (see the Holocaust Memorial Museum, with its carefully calibrated
upbeat message; or see Schindler's List). Already, in the Jewish community,
well-meaning organizations and individuals are mindlessly sponsoring
Internet 'sites' offering a 'Holocaust cybrary' or a 'virtual tour of
Dachau.' Already, an academic conference has been scheduled in Washington
on the subject of 'Deaf People in Hitler's Europe,' where for four days
scholars in three separate victimological fields--'Holocaust Studies,
Deaf Studies, and Deaf History'--will have an opportunity to 'interact.'
Do we really need more of this?"
Jewish Human Rights Group Condemns Holocaust Meeting.
CNN.com. May 14, 2001
"An influential Jewish human rights group [the Simon Wiesenthal
Center] condemned Monday a group of Jordanian writers who had alleged
that Jews exaggerated the Holocaust to gain world sympathy."
As Legend of Anne
Frank Grows, So Do Claims of Misperceptions.
JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency), May 13, 2001
"What accounts for the continuing, even escalating, fascination
with Anne, which arguably has made her the foremost icon of the Holocaust?"
Time to Just Say No -- to
Holocaust Obsession. Jewish World Review.
May 23, 2001
"It would be helpful -- in fact, it may already be necessary --
for Hollywood to impose a moratorium concerning the Holocaust. No more
films, television dramas, or Broadway tragedies about the Holocaust
and its one-dimensional portrayal of Jews as sympathetic yet hapless
victims, or the equally extreme depiction of all mid-century Germans
as Nazi co-conspirators."
Busted!
World News Daily. May 25, 2001
"The tragedy is the Holocaust industy. There are thousands of Holocaust
professionals -- professors, museum curators, moviemakers, foundation
fundraisers, book writers, television producers -- most of whom never
experienced the Holocaust, but are making good money off of it and backs
of those who suffered it ... According to a documents in a class-action
lawsuit ... ICHEIC [the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance
Claims] has spent 10 times ($30 million) more on administrative costs
-- including salaries, luxury hotel bills, and newspaper ads -- than
the $3 million it paid out to survivors."
Holocaust Reparations:
A Growing Scandal, by Gabriel Schoenfeld.
Commentary, September 2000
"In the face of this portrait of avaricious Jews exploiting the
Holocaust for pecuniary gain--a portrait that draws upon time-honored
anti-Semitic images--it is hardly unnatural that a general (if silent)
consensus should reign within the Jewish community on the rightness
of pressing restitution claims. But there have also been one or two
notable dissenters. The syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, for
example, has worried aloud about what he terms a "grotesque scramble
for money," a scramble whose only certain result is the "revival of
Shylockian stereotypes." Abraham Foxman, chairman of the Anti-Defamation
League, has voiced a related concern: thanks to the continuing demands
for reparations, he has said, people around the world may be led to
believe 'that the Jews died [not] because they were Jews, but because
they had bank accounts, gold, art, and property.'"
Goldhagen for
Beginners: A Comment on Jan T. Gross's 'Neighbors.'
Norman Finkelstein Home Page. June 2001
"Gross's book is standard Holocaust industry literature. Two dogmas
inform this literature: 1. The Holocaust marks a categorically unique
historical event; 2. The Holocaust marks the climax of an irrational
Gentile hatred of Jews. Neither dogma withstands scholarly scrutiny.
Both, however, are politically useful: unique Jewish suffering confers
unique Jewish moral entitlement; and, if Gentile hatred of Jews is irrational,
Jews bear no responsibility for this animus."
Survivors'
Lawsuit Seeks 40 Billion from U.S. for Not Bombing Auschwitz.
[Jewish] Forward, April 6, 2001
"In a bizarre addition to the Holocaust-related suits now winding
their way through the courts, two German-Jewish survivors of the Auschwitz
death camp are suing the American government for its failure to bomb
the camp. The plaintiffs in the class-action suit, Kurt Julius Goldstein,
87, and Peter Gingold, 85, are asking for $40 billion in compensation
for survivors and the descendants of the Jews killed in Auschwitz in
the closing months of World War II. They claim that a decision to bomb
the camp would have rescued some 400,000 Hungarian Jews who were deported
there in 1944 and 1945 ... In the past few years, Jewish survivors have
filed numerous lawsuits against Swiss banks, German companies and other
European entities and governments, leading to several multi-billion-dollar
settlements. Recently, however, the focus has been shifting toward America's
role in the Nazi atrocities and their aftermath. A lawsuit, since dropped,
was filed against IBM alleging that its German subsidiary colluded with
the Nazi regime. The Auschwitz bombing suit, despite its remote chances
of success, is creating a sense of unease among Jewish organizations.
The $40 billion sought in compensation is also raising eyebrows."
A
Tale of Intrigue, Feuds, Hollywood Tycoons. Toronto
Star, July 8, 2001
"Emilie Schindler weighs maybe 70 pounds. She is old, sick and
a long way from the World War II era in which she and her husband, Oskar
Schindler, saved more than 1,300 Jews from Nazi death camps. And yet,
around this tiny, frail woman, confined to a wheelchair and totally
dependent upon others, hangs a web of intrigue involving lawsuits, missing
bank deposits, bitterness among Holocaust survivors and literary squabbles.
At heart, it seems to be pretty much about money. People's names have
been smeared, including Hollywood director Steven Spielberg. His 1993
Academy Award-winning film, Schindler's List, popularized the story
of the German industrialist who made a list to save Jewish slave labourers
from the gas chambers of the Third Reich ... Emilie is 93 now. Once
she was Oskar's gorgeous wife, who stood by through all his mistresses
and spoke proudly of their wartime legacy after he died, at age 66,
in 1974. Since then, her life has taken a dreadful turn and, at this
moment, she languishes in a German hospital, drugged, and appearing
to be under the complete control of one Erika Rosenberg. Over the past
decade, Rosenberg, 50, an Argentine writer who has made a literary career
out of the Schindlers, has played an increasingly central role in Emilie's
life, whittling down her contact with former friends and supporters
and taking charge of her affairs."
Foreward to the
Paperback Edition [of The Holocaust Industry]. Norman
Finkelstein Home Page, 2001
"The New York Times serves as the main promotional vehicle
of the Holocaust industry. It is primarily responsible for advancing
the careers of Jerzy Kosinski, Daniel Goldhagen, and Elie Wiesel. For
frequency of coverage, the Holocaust places a close second to the daily
weather report. Typically, the New York Times Index 1999 listed
fully 273 entries for the Holocaust. By comparison, the whole of Africa
rated 32 entries."
Holocaust
Creationism. The Nation, July 12, 1999
"[Jewish scholar Peter] Novick shows that while the Holocaust as
such was scarcely talked about from 1945 to 1965, from the seventies
on it became increasingly central to Jewish self-consciousness. Despite
the fact that after World War II Jews became the best-educated, most
politically effective and wealthiest ethnic group in American society,
official Judaism since the seventies has increasingly drawn on the Holocaust
to portray Jews as victims, pitting them against other groups seeking
redress -- especially through affirmative action -- for their own victimization
... As a historian, Novick is profoundly critical of the argument that
the Holocaust as 'unique' ... The uniqueness argument serves primarily
to denigrate or minimize the suffering of others."
Rabbi
Calls Holocaust Victims Reincarnations of Sinners. Jefferson
City News Tribune [from the Associated Press], August 7, 2000
"In a fireside chat that ended up setting the Mideast tinderbox
political culture ablaze, a powerful rabbi crucial to Prime Minister
Ehud Barak's peace moves described Holocaust victims as 'sinners; and
Arabs as 'snakes.' Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox
Shas party, started the Jewish week by saying victims of the Nazi Holocaust
were reincarnated souls seeking redemption for past sins. He also said
in a sermon broadcast Saturday night that Barak 'lacked sense' for seeking
to make peace with the Arabs, whom he described as 'snakes.'"
Fragments
of a Fraud. Guardian [Great Britain],
October 15, 1999
"Christopher Hope called it 'achingly beautiful'; the New York
Times said it was written 'with a poet's vision; a child's state of
grace'; Anne Karpf in this paper described it as 'one of the great works
about the Holocaust'; all were agreed it was a masterpiece. There is
just one problem - Binjamin Wilkomirski's memoir of surviving as a Jewish
child alone in the Nazi concentration camps of Majdanek and Auschwitz
was a fabrication, invented from beginning to end, one of the great
hoaxes in publishing history."
The
Mission of Sylvia Wygoda. Atlanta Jewish Times,
June 18, 1999
"Today [the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust] operates on a
budget of nearly $214,000 and plays a prominent role in the education
of every Georgia student who studies the horrors of the Holocaust ...
In recent months, a gay activist in Atlanta tookthe agency to task for
minimizing the plight of homosexual Holocaust victims. That led to more
scrutiny and a focus on Sylvia Wygoda, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor
who until last week was both the commission's paid executive director
and head of its volunteer board. With a $70,000 annual salary and as
much as $20,000 a year in benefits, Wygoda earns more than any other
Holocaust commission director in the country ... Wygoda, however, is
unable to produce substantial minutes and records of commission meetings
where money was allocated and spent. And at least two of her 15 commissioners
say they're not sure how money is allotted ... The Georgia Holocaust
Commission caused a rift with the city's gay community. The commission
made repeated headlines in January with the deletion of two paragraphs
from a Holocaust teachers' guide about gay and lesbian persecution.
The incident triggered a confrontation between the gay community and
the commission. Allegations of lies and even death threats played out
in the press."
Opinion: The
Holocaust Industry, by Norman Finkelstein.
Index on Censorship, Issue 2, 2000
"'Holocaust awareness,’ the Israeli writer Boas Evron observes,
is actually ‘an official, propagandistic indoctrination, a churning
out of slogans and a false view of the world, the real aim of which
is not at all an understanding of the past, but a manipulation of the
present.’ Two central dogmas underpin the Holocaust framework: the Holocaust
marks a categorically unique historical event and the climax of an irrational
Gentile hatred of Jews. Although they became the centrepieces of Holocaust
literature, neither figures at all in genuine scholarship on the Nazi
Holocaust. On the other hand, both dogmas draw on important strands
in Judaism and in Zionism ... The uniqueness dogma makes no sense. Every
historical event is unique, if merely by virtue of time and location,
and every historical event bears distinct features as well as features
in common with other historical events. The anomaly of the Holocaust
is that its uniqueness is held to be crucial. What other historical
event, one might ask, is framed largely for its categorical uniqueness?
Typically, distinctive features of the Holocaust are isolated in order
to place the event itself in a category apart."
Gahunna
Mayor Says He Erred in Flying Israeli Flag.
Columbus Dispatch, April 19, 2001
"Flying the Israeli flag in remembrance of the Holocaust was 'not
such a good idea,'' Gahanna [Ohio] Mayor Jim McGregor said yesterday.
'No one asked me to do it. It was my idea alone,'' said McGregor, who
removed the flag from a pole at City Hall on Tuesday morning after meeting
Monday with representatives of the Arab-American community. McGregor
said he has been reading about the Holocaust and was saddened and appalled
at the failure of nations in the 1930s to provide refuge for Jews fleeing
Nazi Germany persecution. He had planned to display the Israeli flag,
which had been raised Monday, until Friday as part of a weeklong remembrance.
It was intended to symbolize the place where Jews were able to go after
the persecution ... 'The desire to honor and remember all those who
died at the hands of the Nazis is unrelated to flying the Israeli flag,'
said Ahmad Al-Akhras of the Council on American-Islamic Relations-OHIO
... Andy Amid of the Islamic Council of Ohio also attended the meeting.
'Americans cannot, without a strong sense of hypocrisy, praise the principles
of Holocaust remembrance on the one hand, and turn a blind eye to the
daily atrocities committed by Israel on the other,' he said."
IRS:
No Taxes on Holocausts Payments,
Washington Post [from Associated Press],
August 30, 2001
"A small piece of this year's tax cut law ensures that payments
related to the Holocaust are not subject to the income tax ... The 10-year,
$1.35 trillion tax cut signed into law in June by President Bush says
that no income taxes are due on Holocaust restitution payments made
by European governments and industry. The provision applies to payments
after Jan. 1, 2000, made to Holocaust victims, their heirs and their
estates. 'This is an important symbolic act by the U.S. government on
behalf of Holocaust survivors,' said Rabbi Israel Miller, president
of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which is
overseeing distribution of payments from Germany ... Exempting the payments
from U.S. income tax will reduce federal revenue by an estimated $31
million over the next decade."
Nazi-Themed Shows Take Four Awards at This Year's Emmy Awards,
JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency), November
6, 2001
"Three prime-time television dramas on Holocaust themes won top
honors at Sunday night´s Emmy Awards, proving once again the lasting
impact of the Nazi horror in our popular culture ... Actress Ellen DeGeneres
emceed the event and drew the evening´s biggest laugh when she observed,
'I´m in a unique position as host because, think about it, what would
bug the Taliban more than seeing a gay woman in a suit surrounded by
Jews?'"
Why Have Christian
Victims of Nazi Genocides Been Forgotten?,
by Richard C. Lukas, Holocaust Forgotten
"When it comes to the history of World War II, the American media
has developed a black hole concerning the genocidal policies of the
Nazis against Christians. Everyone should know by now that not all of
Nazism’s victims were Jews. Millions—we do not know and probably will
never know the precise number—were Christians, mostly civilians selected
for destruction for ethnic, religious, social, cultural, or political
reasons. When Christians of that era are mentioned in the media, their
victimization is either ignored, trivialized or distorted. Too often
false generalizations about pandemic Christian collaboration with the
Nazis against the Jews are made to deflect attention away from the huge
numbers of Christian victims during the most destructive war in history.
No group’s victimization has been more distorted in American film, television
and journalism than the Polish nation, which lost 3 million of its largely
Catholic citizenry, most of whom died at the hands of the Nazis. Among
the last few refugees of bigotry in the United States are the anti-Catholicism
and anti-Polonism. Since most Poles are Catholic, they have been especially
vulnerable. The most disturbing Polonophobic slander is the obscene
claim, repeated with nauseating regularity, that Catholic Poles were
complicit in the Holocaust of the Jews."
Deporting
the Defenceless, Toronto Sun, November
28, 2001
"[A] trial opens in Hamilton today to deport a 91-year-old deaf
man with Alzheimer's, who the government thinks lied to get into Canada
54 years ago. Immigration Minister Elinor Caplan wants Jacob
Fast deported because he 'probably' didn't tell the truth about being
coerced into auxiliary police attached to a Nazi SS unit during the
war. Fast was born in Soviet Ukraine in 1910. When he was accused, a
couple of years ago, of working with the Nazis and mistreating prisoners,
he denied it (don't they all?). Ottawa has no records to show he lied
when he and his family came to Canada in 1947 -- a time when refugee
screening was casual, and displaced persons were being settled in the
thousands. Fast now lives in an old-age home in St. Catharines, cannot
maintain a conversation because of Alzheimer's, can't defend himself,
and won't appear at his Hamilton trial today. This is a civil case,
not a criminal one, so Mr. Justice Denis Pelletier of the Federal Court
has ruled it's not necessary for the defendant to appear in person.
I have no knowledge of Mr. Fast (a retired auto worker), but the fact
that he's another Ukrainian targeted by immigration, smacks of prejudice,
vindictiveness, vendetta. Wasyl Odynsky, of Toronto, who at age 17 was
forced into auxiliary police in World War II as a perimeter guard at
a concentration camp, is another Ms Caplan is determined to deport.
The record shows that when young Odynsky refused to report to the auxiliary
police and ran away, he was caught and told if he ran away again, his
parents and family would pay the price. Another Ukrainian, Helmut Oberlander,
has already been ordered deported. He was a teenaged translator for
the Germans in World War II. As for Mr. Fast -- what does it matter
today what he did or didn't do in World War II? We know the Nazis viewed
Ukrainians as 'subhuman' and punished them rather as they punished Jews
in Ukraine -- Babi Yar in Kiev was a massacre of Ukrainians and Jews."
Nazis
Plan Protests as Atrocities Exhibition Reopens,
Independent [London], November 28, 2001
"Neo-Nazis from across Europe are planning a protest rally in Berlin
this weekend after the reopening last night of a controversial exhibition
which has sparked riots in several other German cities. The new, improved
version of 'Crimes of the Wehrmacht' sets out to prove that ordinary
German soldiers, not just a Nazi hard core, took part in atrocities
against civilians during the Second World War. The original exhibition
was closed two years ago when a Polish historian discovered that some
of the pictures showed not German troops, but the Soviet NKVD secret
service at work." [Jews were prominent in the Soviet NKVD: "Some
of the main instruments of the Terror [against everyone] were also of
Jewish origin: M. I. Gay, who headed a special secret police department;
A.A. Slutsky and his deputies Boris Berman and Shpiegelgas, who were
in charge of terror and espionage abroad; and NKVD operations chief
Pauker. None of these mass executioners survived [later purges of them]."
[RAPOPORT, Louis, Stalin's War Against the Jews, Free Press, 1990, p.
49-50]
The
ADL Versus Superman, by Danny Goldberg,
Tikkun [this article is cached at Google.com]
"In a most amusing and absurd manifestation of the disconnect between
much of the political, academic, and journalistic elite and their constituency,
the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), supported by The Washington Post
and The New York Times, has attacked Superman and Rugrats. Abraham
Foxman, national director of the ADL, pillar of the 'organized'
Jewish world, wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times of October
31, 1998, which lamented the 'trivialization of Holocaust imagery.'
Amidst requisite praise for Schindler's List and Life is Beautiful,
Foxman criticized three recent issues of Superman comic books
in which Superman goes back in time to fight the Nazis. According to
Foxman, 'he never names the victims. The intent was to send a universal
message. The result proved offensive to Holocaust victims.' (Note the
hubris of the last sentence--Foxman purports to speak not only for his
organization but for the entire universe of Holocaust survivors!) To
clarify the Superman 'issue': although the publishers did not use the
word 'Jew' in the comics in question, the victims were shown wearing
yarmulkes and prayer shawls, had Jewish names like Mordechai and Baruch,
and referred to each other using Yiddish terms such as 'bubeh' and 'zayde.
Jenette Kahn, CEO of DC Comics, the publisher of Superman,
explains, 'There was no attempt at all to disguise the fact that the
primary victims were Jewish.' Kahn, who is Jewish, prominently printed
critical letters from Foxman and the Simon Weisenthal Institute in subsequent
issues of Superman, and apologized for not using the word 'Jew' in the
story, while pointing out that the creators felt the characters' Jewishness
was, in fact, conveyed."
Swiss
Holocaust Cash Revealed to Be Myth,
Times [of London], October 13, 2001
"Most dormant Swiss bank accounts thought to have belonged to Holocaust
survivors were opened by wealthy, non-Jewish people who then forgot
about their money. The announcement marks the end of a four-year independent
investigation into the archives and vaults of the world’s most secretive
banking system. It will come as a disappointment to many Jewish families,
who were sure that their dead relatives left behind fortunes in Switzerland.
A 17-member tribunal based in Zurich was set up in 1997 to investigate
the identities of 5,500 foreign accounts and 10,000 Swiss accounts that
have lain dormant since the end of the Second World War. The tribunal
said that it had processed about 10,000 claims in response to the list
of dormant account names published by the Swiss Bankers’ Association
five years ago. Only 200 accounts — containing £6.9 million — could
be traced to Holocaust victims. 'It was a very difficult and often sad
process,' Alexander Jolles, the secretary-general of the Independent
Claims Tribunal, said. 'When we first set up the tribunal, we were sure
that nearly all these accounts would be those of Nazi victims. But few
were.' Seventy-nine per cent of the accounts declared dormant by the
Swiss banks were traced to wealthy families who had lost trace of their
money."
Catholic
Heroes of the Holocaust,
Augustine Club (Columbia University), 1998
"By the end of 1943, some 650 Jewish children were hidden in Warsaw
churches and convents. According to [Jewish author Pinchas] Lapide,
in Poland as a whole, hundreds of Catholic clergy and religious saved
at least 15,000—perhaps as many as 50,000 ... [In Lithuania] Church
and Underground leaders protested. Priests, peasants and nuns hid many
Jews. Some Jews found refuge in the forests, where people brought them
food and clean clothes."
Health Minister: Assimilation Worse Than Holocaust,
Jerusalem Post, December 30, 2001
"Assimilation was a greater catastrophe for the Jewish people than
the Holocaust, [Israeli] Health Minister Nissim Dahan said this
morning. Dahan (Shas) first made the comments to a convention of Rabbinical
Council of America meeting in Jerusalem on Friday. He repeated the allegation
in an interview with Israel Radio this morning. Dahan said the Jewish
people should number some 500 million today, asking, 'Where has this
nation disappeared to?' 'This phenomenon [assimilation], was 'another
huge disaster, maybe parallel' to the Holocaust, Dahan said."
Holocaust
Heirs Losing Millions to Jewish Organizations,
Jerusalem Post, January 15, 2002
"World Jewish organizations are set to 'rake into their coffers'
some $1 billion in unclaimed funds allocated by Swiss banks to compensate
for assets from dormant Holocaust-era accounts, Herut MK Michael
Kleiner said. Only some 3 percent, or $37 million, of the $1.25
billion coming from the settlement with the Swiss banks is likely to
be paid to the legal heirs of the assets, according to an estimate obtained
by Kleiner. The deadline for submitting claims was January 1. Kleiner
attributes the failure to locate the heirs to the publication of details
for only 31,000 of some 300,000 dormant accounts he says fit the profile
of Holocaust victims. Kleiner is demanding that the government push
for the publication of the names of the asset owners, and is to put
the matter on the Knesset agenda today. 'There are heirs, and it is
not too late to find them,' Kleiner said yesterday. 'If the Jewish organizations
had any morals, they would push for the publication of the names, instead
of making plans...to spend the money on projects.' A founder of the
local Generali Fund, which is settling claims from Israelis for Holocaust-era
insurance policies, Kleiner also charges that only some 24,000 of 300,000
names of Generali insurance policyholders have been released."
German
Jewish Leader Testifies in Holocaust Denial Case,
JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency), January
16, 2002
"The president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany has faced
off in court against a German lawyer charged with denying the Holocaust.
Council president Paul Spiegel was called as a witness last Monday
in the trial of Udo von B., an attorney from Dusseldorf. Von B. is accused
of Holocaust denial, which is a crime in Germany. At issue is whether
the claim to 'not have seen anything' in the period between August 1944
and January 1945 can legally be defined as 'Holocaust denial.' The incident
in question took place at a November 2000 dinner for more than 70 German
notables hosted by Deutsche Bank. Following after-dinner remarks by
Spiegel, von B. allegedly expressed doubt that there had been
any murders committed at Auschwitz. He also suggested that discussion
of the Holocaust contributes to anti-Semitism ... [H]e asked if Spiegel
didn´t think that constant reminders of the Holocaust — such as
Spiegel´s own speech — hindered good relations between Jews and
Gentiles in Germany, especially considering the reparations Germany
has paid. According to Spiegel, none of the guests at the dinner
reacted to von B.´s comments, which Spiegel called 'a subtle
form of Holocaust denial.'"
The 'Second Generation' of Holocaust Survivor, spiked.com,
January 24, 2002
"From the Jewish Lesbian Daughters of Holocaust Survivors to Children
of the Holocaust Anonymous, children whose parents died in the Holocaust
are lining up to claim the status of Holocaust victims. - There is a
growing tendency to interpret victimisation as a kind of disease that
can be handed down from generation to generation. - What is it about
today's society that makes people so keen to get a piece of their parents'
trauma? In our therapeutic culture, the politics of memory is on the
rise. On an individual level, and now across societies, past experiences
are continually reinterpreted. The cultural manipulation of memory has
been particularly controversial in relation to what one side characterises
as recovered memory syndrome and the other as false memory syndrome.
Yet from a sociological standpoint, the most interesting aspect of this
debate is not who is right and who is wrong, but the fact that memory
itself has become so politicised, and that the representation of the
past is so contested ... Today, the rewriting of history is driven by
a very different impulse. The manipulation of collective memory makes
no grand claims on the future. On the contrary, the historic memory
serves as a monument to a people's historic suffering. In a perceptive
contribution on this subject, Ian Buruma has drawn attention to the
tendency of many minorities 'to define themselves as historic victims'.
The Holocaust has become the icon for therapeutic history. The extreme
and singular brutality of this event ensures that those who perished
or suffered in the concentration camps are regarded with a reverence
unmatched by any other groups of victims. Jewish identity - even Israeli
identity - has been fundamentally recast around the Holocaust. Zionism,
which had traditionally promoted an optimistic modernist vision of the
pioneering new Jew, has in recent decades sought to forge a sense of
community around an emotional connection with the Holocaust ... There
are numerous constituencies demanding to be recognised as possessing
a distinct victim identity: including the International Association
of Lesbian and Gay Children of Holocaust Survivors, Descendants of the
Jewish Community of Augsburg, Second Generation Children from Nuremberg,
and the Jewish Lesbian Daughters of Holocaust Survivors ... But whatever
the facts of the matter, activists are busy constructing a victim identity
through rendering their family existence pathological. Aping the American
addiction and co-dependency movement, some second-generation activists
have even launched 'Children of the Holocaust Anonymous'. This initiative
has self-consciously borrowed the Alcoholics Anonymous '12-step' support
programme to support its constituents. And there is more to come, as
publicists are promising to bring the third generation of survivors
into the frame."
Wiesel
Words, The Nation, February 19, 2001
"Is there a more contemptible poseur and windbag than [famous Holocaust
speaker] Elie Wiesel? I suppose there may be. But not, surely,
a poseur and windbag who receives (and takes as his due) such grotesque
deference on moral questions. Look, if you will, at his essay on Jerusalem
in the New York Times of January 24. As a Jew living in the
United States, I have long denied myself the right to intervene in Israel's
internal debates.... My critics have their conception of social and
individual ethics; I have mine. But while I grant them their right to
criticize, they sometimes deny mine to abstain. Such magnificent
condescension, to grant his critics the right. And it is not certain
from when Wiesel dates his high-minded abstention from Israel's internal
affairs; he was a member of Menachem Begin's Irgun in the 1940s,
when that force employed extreme violence against Arab civilians and
was more than ready to use it against Jews ... But for Wiesel all Arabs
are Muslims, and even if they happen to live in Jerusalem, this is nothing
to the way that Jerusalem dwells within Wiesel. Indeed, it would evidently
dwell more comfortably within him if they did not live in it at all.
Do I exaggerate? I don't think so. In a propaganda tour of recent history,
he asserts that in 1948, 'incited by their leaders, 600,000 Palestinians
left the country convinced that, once Israel was vanquished, they would
be able to return home.' This claim is a cheap lie and is known by Wiesel
to be a lie. It is furthermore an utterly discredited lie, and one that
Israeli officialdom no longer cares to repeat. Israeli and Jewish historians
have exposed it time and again."
No
Business Like Shoah Business,
Sydney Morning Herald, March 3, 2002
"Until prime-time television rammed home the story, most Americans
cared little about the genocide of the Jews. Now, writes Detlef Junker,
the Holocaust belongs to Uncle Sam and his mission to save the world
... During the past 30 years the Holocaust has moved from the periphery
to the centre of American culture. Foreign visitors encounter almost
everywhere Holocaust-related products of research and education, as
institutionalised in museums, memorials, research centres, universities
and schools. In the process, however, the Shoah has been politicised,
trivialised and commercialised. Above all, the Holocaust has become
the centre of Jewish identity in the United States. In a poll published
in 1999 by the American Jewish Committee, 98 per cent of American Jews
said they consider the Holocaust to be an important or very important
part of their identity, whereas only 15 per cent said that they observe
Jewish religious obligations and traditions. The Holocaust has gained
a totally new meaning in American society, due in large part to this
shift in the self-perception of what, since 1945, has been in many ways
America's most successful minority. It was predictable that the tension
between the Americanisation of the Holocaust and its meaning to the
identity of American Jews at some point would initiate a new wave of
reflection and criticism. Exactly this reaction now seems to be developing
among American intellectuals ... There are now more than 100 Holocaust
museums and research centres throughout the US and a Holocaust monument
in nearly every major US city, including New York, Boston, Detroit,
Los Angeles, Tampa Bay, Houston and Dallas. The trend seems to be growing.
Americans seem to have in a sense taken trusteeship of one of the worst
crimes many believe the worst crime in European history. The omnipresence
of the Holocaust is evident in the coverage devoted to the subject in
the two most politically influential US newspapers, The New York
Times and The Washington Post. In 1996, for example,
The New York Times published more than 500 Holocaust-related
articles, The Washington Post more than 300. And the trend seems
to be growing."
Gilbert
Teacher: Fired for 'Jewishness?',
Arizona Republic, April 5, 2002
"Gilbert school officials say Michelle Moore interactions
with staff have been problematic. But the Highland Junior High English
teacher believes her contract is not being renewed because she spooned
a little too much of her 'Jewishness' into the curriculum for the administration's
liking. Four members of the district's governing board voted Thursday
night for Moore's ouster at the end of the school year while one member
abstained. Moore, 58, said she has yet to be provided with examples
of non-compliance. School officials had no comment. She said she began
to feel the heat while teaching a Holocaust unit. 'I think they (staff)
felt, as I was told, I probably put too much of my Jewishness into it,'Moore
said ... Moore said she plans to file a lawsuit against the district
and may lodge a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission."
Berkeley
Clash Seen as Glimpse of Future Strife,
[Jewish] Forward, April 12, 2002
"Bearing signs equating Israelis with Nazis and comparing Israel
to South Africa under apartheid, hundreds of pro-Palestinian student
activists wound their way through the University of California at Berkeley
Tuesday. They all but drowned out a nearby Holocaust Remembrance Day
observance and outnumbered pro-Israel counter-demonstrators by approximately
three to one, observers said. By the end, 78 pro-Palestinian protesters
were arrested for occupying a university building and disrupting academic
activity, the chancellor's office said. Organized by a group called
Students for Justice in Palestine, which seeks to link like-minded activists
at universities nationwide, the protest was one of many held on campuses
across the country Tuesday. Yet communal activists say the tenor of
debate — or lack of debate — at Berkeley is a bellwether for spreading
protests that are evolving far beyond legitimate criticism of the Israeli
government and its policies into complete delegitimization of the Jewish
state ... Since the outbreak of the intifada in September 2000, the
northern California university has become a flashpoint for anti-Israel
activism and even antisemitic attacks, creating what activists call
one of the most heated political climates in decades."
Were There
Jews in the Nazi Army?
Chronicle of Higher Education, May 3, 2002
"This month, the University Press of Kansas releases Hitler's Jewish
Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent
in the German Military, on which Mr. Rigg has been laboring since his
sophomore year of college. Controversy has shadowed his work for years.
Articles about Mr. Rigg's research in the London Daily Telegraph,
The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times in late
1996 and 1997 -- when he was just starting graduate school -- brought
it exceptionally high visibility for such an embryonic dissertation.
It also brought him into contact with the people who would form the
core of his study: the several hundred soldiers of partly Jewish origin
in the Nazi military who told him their extraordinary stories ... What
surfaces in those papers, and in Mr. Rigg's in-depth interviews, is
a glimpse into how the several thousand men of partial Jewish origin
who served in Hitler's army saw themselves -- how they felt about their
Germanness, their Jewishness, the war, the Holocaust, and their own
participation therein. Mr. Rigg estimates that there were upwards of
100,000 such "Mischlinge" -- German for mixed-blood or half-breed --
as they were known in Nazi parlance, and possibly as many as 150,000,
a calculation that some of his critics regard as wildly overblown ...The
more he learned about these soldiers -- and how little-known their part
in the war was -- the more passionately he began to feel that the chronicling
of their history depended on him. 'If I didn't tell these stories,'
he says, his voice rising with enthusiasm, "nobody would."
Germans Less Willing to Treat Israel with Kid Gloves,
Faz.net, April 8, 2002
"It would appear that even in Germany, Israel's closest European
friend, officials are no longer willing to trust everything Israel says
... All last week, Israel was able to follow in the press how its latest
offensive has brought about a change of mood in Germany and how the
old German reluctance to voice criticism of the Jewish state has melted
away. Former Labor Minister Norbert Blüm, a Christian Democrat, set
the ball rolling. In a letter to Israel's ambassador in Berlin, Shimon
Stein, he described the current Israeli offensive as a "war of annihilation"
-- a term Hitler used to describe Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet
Union. When the letter was published on Tuesday, it seemed to open the
floodgates. The next day, Karl Lamers, parliamentary foreign affairs
spokesman for the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union,
said that, as a "last resort," Europe must be prepared to respond to
the violence in the Middle East with sanctions. Free Democratic Party
Deputy Chairman Jürgen Möllemann confirmed his reputation as political
maverick by going to the limit beyond which support for Palestinian
terror begins. "I would resist, too, and use force to do so," he said,
"not just in my own country but in the aggressor's country as well."
And an Emnid poll followed on Friday showing that 73 percent of Germans
thought "Israel's tough action against the Palestinians" was unjustified.
Two things are unusual here. First, the kid-glove era of German relations
with Israel seems to be over. Against the backdrop of Berlin, the new
capital, the historical drama of German-Jewish relations is seen in
a new light."
Panhandle Students
Get Realistic Holocaust Experience,
tbo.com (Tampa Bay, FL), May 1, 2002
"The children looked at the German sign 'Arbeit Macht Frei' - 'Work
Makes One Free' - while strains of Wagner filled the air. 'You there,
eyes down! No talking, or no food,' a teacher shouted Tuesday as sixth-grade
students, all volunteers, silently ate dry bread and watery potato soup,
washed down with diluted coffee, at a mock concentration camp soup kitchen.
State law requires teaching children about the Nazi persecution of Jews
and others during the Holocaust. The lunchtime activity is only one
way that requirement is being met at Pryor Middle School in this Florida
Panhandle. Teacher Sonnie Durrett, who serves on the Fort Walton
Beach Holocaust Remembrance Committee, organized the lesson with help
from some parents and another committee member, Bonnie London,
of Temple Beth Shalom. Durrett wore a striped prisoner's uniform for
added realism, but students playing the roles of Holocaust survivors
had a hard time stifling nervous giggles. Food was taken away from those
unable to stay in character. 'I think it is just so awesome that our
kids are learning about this in this way,' said parent Robin Aldredge,
who helped ladle soup. 'With what's going on in the world now, it's
important for us to show them what hatred does, how people are treated
just because they are different.' Her son Scott didn't like the soup
- he called it 'nasty' - nor being yelled at, but he now has at least
a small idea of how the prisoners felt. Krista Eubanks said she will
never read another book or watch another movie about the Holocaust without
identifying more closely with the characters. The Okaloosa County school
district normally teaches the subject by studying such works as 'The
Diary of Anne Frank' or through social studies and history classes.
The soup kitchen activity was conducted here once several years ago
and Durrett revived the idea. She is a leading figure in Holocaust education
locally and has attended training seminars at Florida State University
and the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C."
As
Tolerance Museums Proliferate, French Tycoon To Fund One in Paris,
JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency), May 7,
2002
"A French multimedia mogul will spearhead a five-year project to
build a European museum of tolerance in Paris, modeled largely on the
Simon Wiesenthal Center´s Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. Jean-Marie
Messier, the chairman and CEO of Vivendi Universal announced plans for
the Museum of Mutual Respect while accepting the Wiesenthal Center´s
2002 Humanitarian Award at its national tribute dinner May 2. The planned
museum in Paris will be one of a growing number of tolerance museums
planned around the world. At the same event, Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder
and dean of the Wiesenthal Center, presented plans for a New York Tolerance
Center. In a separate interview, he detailed progress on the projected
tolerance museum in Jerusalem ... Messier said that "to be a Jew is
to understand, deep in your bones and right through your heart, that
intolerance is wrong. Absolutely wrong." Preceding Messier´s address,
Hier showed plans for the Wiesenthal Center´s New York Tolerance Center,
currently under construction in the old Daily News building at 42nd
Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan. The New York center will serve
a dual function. During the day, law enforcement officers and educators
will participate in the four-day Tools for Tolerance program, which
aims to sensitize "front-line professionals" to the problems of dealing
with diverse ethnic and religious groups in a large city. In the evenings,
the facility will be used as a leadership training center for young
men and women active in the Jewish community ... New York´s state legislature,
governor´s office and the federal government are providing some funding
for the center. About 750,000 persons from 33 states have participated
in the Tools for Tolerance training sessions in Los Angeles since its
beginning six years ago, said Liebe Geft, director of the Museum
of Tolerance. At the same time, plans are going ahead for a Wiesenthal
Center-sponsored museum of tolerance in Jerusalem, with Frank Gehry
as the architect. The center will bear the name Winnick Institute, in
recognition of a $40 million pledge by Los Angeles business executive
Gary Winnick toward the project, which will cost a total of $200
million, including an endowment. Hier said Messier had shown an interest
in supporting the Jerusalem center."
THE HOLOCAUST YOU PROBABLY NEVER HEARD
ABOUT:
(Tens of millions of people were killed by Soviet Union communism. The
Jewish dimension in the communist elite was great, including extraordinary
prominence in the early terrorist communist secret police: the "Cheka."
Information about Jewish influence in the hierarchy of this mass murder
systemn is here).
Lethal Politics,
by R.J. Rummel, University of Hawaii
"Probably 61,911,000 people, 54,769,000 of them citizens, have
been murdered by the Communist Party--the government--of the Soviet
Union. This is about 178 people for each letter, comma, period, digit,
and other characters in this book. Old and young, healthy and sick,
men and women, and even infants and infirm, were killed in cold-blood.
They were not combatants in civil war or rebellions, they were not criminals.
Indeed, nearly all were guilty of ... nothing. Some were from the wrong
class--bourgeoisie, land owners, aristocrats, kulaks. Some were from
the wrong nation or race-- Ukrainians, Black Sea Greeks, Kalmyks, Volga
Germans. Some were from the wrong political faction--Trotskyites, Mensheviks,
Social Revolutionaries. Or some were just their sons and daughters,
wives and husbands, or mothers and fathers. And some were those occupied
by the Red Army--Balts, Germans, Poles, Hungarians, Rumanians. Then
some were simply in the way of social progress, like the mass of peasants
or religious believers. Or some were eliminated because of their potential
opposition, such as writers, teachers, churchmen; or the military high
command; or even high and low Communist Party members themselves. In
fact, we have witnessed in the Soviet Union a true egalitarian social
cleansing and flushing: no group or class escaped, for everyone and
anyone could have had counter-revolutionary ancestors, class lineage,
counter-revolutionary ideas or thought, or be susceptible to them. And
thus, almost anyone was arrested, interrogated, tortured, and after
a forced confession of a plot to blow up the Kremlin, or some such,
shot or sentenced to the dry guillotine--slow death by exposure, malnutrition,
and overwork in a forced labor camp. Part of this mass killing was genocide,
as in the wholesale murder of hundreds of thousands of Don Cossacks
in 1919, the intentional starving of about 5,000,000 Ukrainian peasants
to death in 1932-33, or the deportation to mass death of 50,000 to 60,000
Estonians in 1949. Part was mass murder, as of the wholesale extermination
of perhaps 6,500,000 "kulaks" (in effect, the better off peasants and
those resisting collectivization) from 1930 to 1937, the execution of
perhaps a million Party members in the Great Terror of 1937-38,5 and
the massacre of all Trotskyites in the forced labor camps.6 And part
of the killing was so random and idiosyncratic that journalists and
social scientists have no concept for it, as in hundreds of thousands
of people being executed according to preset, government, quotas."
* Not Enough? There's much,
much more about the Holocaust.
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