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Gehrig vs. Finkelstein |
Current rating: 0 |
by David Green
Email: davegreen84 (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified!)
Phone: 217-840-3979 |
30 Aug 2006
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David Gehrig, local advocate for the Holocaust Industry and IMC moderator, has posted an article with claims and largely spurious counter-claims regarding the work of Norman Finkelstein, who has exposed the fraudulent manner in which the Holocaust has been exploited. This is an annotated critique of the Observor article. |
David Gehrig, local advocate for the Holocaust Industry and IMC moderator, has posted an article with claims and largely spurious counter-claims regarding the work of Norman Finkelstein, who has exposed the fraudulent manner in which the Holocaust has been exploited. This is an annotated critique of the Observor article.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,343931,00.html
Claim and counter-claim about the Holocaust
Finkelstein's claim: If, as is agreed, there were only 100,000 Jewish survivors of the concentration camps at the end of the war, many of whom died shortly afterwards, there cannot be hundreds of thousands of survivors still living deserving to be compensated by the Swiss and the Germans.
Counter-claim: The definition of a survivor has moved to take in not only those who were in the camps but also those who were forced to flee their homes and their country, those who lived out the war in the forests and, in some cases, victims' descendants who suffered psychological and/ or financial problems.
David Green’s Comment: This counter-claim serves to make Finkelstein’s point. This definition of a survivor is inflated in order to justify exorbitant claims on Swiss banks, and provides no credible or realistic basis for awarding compensation, especially in terms of “psychological and/or financial problems.” There is clearly no intention of compensating “survivors” on such a broad basis, and indeed such a plan would only result in an unbecoming free-for-all among claimants, honestly intended or otherwise. Instead, inflated figures have become the basis of claims for more money that will go to Jewish organizations, and also provide fodder for Holocaust deniers—as Finkelstein says in quoting his mother, if there are so many more survivors then were previously thought, who died?
Two links from the Dean of Holocaust historians, Raul Hilberg, illuminate:
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=3&ar=202
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=3&ar=50
Excerpt from Norman Finkelstein’s The Holocaust Industry (2000):
The term 'Holocaust survivor' originally designated those who suffered the unique trauma of the Jewish ghettos, concentration camps and slave labour camps, often in sequence. The figure for these Holocaust survivors at war's end is generally put at some 100,000. The number of living survivors cannot be more than a quarter of this figure now. Because enduring the camps became a crown of martyrdom, many Jews who spent the war elsewhere represented themselves as camp survivors. Another strong motive behind this misrepresentation, however, was material. The postwar German government provided compensation to Jews who had been in ghettos or camps. Many Jews fabricated their pasts to meet this eligibility requirement. 'If everyone who claims to be a survivor actually is one,' my mother used to exclaim, 'who did Hitler kill?'
Even within the Holocaust industry, Deborah Lipstadt, for example, wryly observes that Holocaust survivors frequently maintain they were personally examined by Josef Mengele at Auschwitz. Because survivors are now revered as secular saints, one doesn't dare question them. Preposterous statements pass without comment. Elie Wiesel reminisces in his acclaimed memoir that, recently liberated from Buchenwald and only 18 years old, 'I read the Critique of Pure Reason don't laugh! in Yiddish.' Leaving aside Wiesel's acknowledgment that at the time 'I was wholly ignorant of Yiddish grammar,' The Critique of Pure Reason was never translated into Yiddish. 'The truth I present is unvarnished,' Wiesel sighs, 'I cannot do otherwise.'
In recent years, 'Holocaust survivor' has been redefined to designate not only those who endured but also those who managed to evade the Nazis. One contributor to a Holocaust website maintained that, although he spent the war in Tel Aviv, he was a Holocaust survivor because his grandmother died in Auschwitz. According to Israel Gutman, a former inmate of Auschwitz, director of Yad Vashem and a Holocaust lecturer at Hebrew University, 'it's not that important' whether Binjamin Wilkomirski's [now discredited 'autobiographical' account of childhood in the camps], Fragments, is a fraud. 'Wilkomirski has written a story which he has experienced deeply; that's for sure . . . He is not a fake. He is someone who lives this story very deeply in his soul.' So it doesn't matter whether he spent the war in a concentration camp or a Swiss chalet; Wilkomirski is a Holocaust survivor because 'his pain is authentic.'
The Israeli prime minister's office recently put the number of 'living Holocaust survivors' at nearly a million. The main motive behind this inflationary revision is again not hard to find. It is difficult to press massive new claims for reparations if only a handful of Holocaust survivors are still alive.
In the early 1950s, Germany entered into negotiations with Jewish institutions and signed indemnification agreements. It has paid out to date some Dollars 60bn. The German government also negotiated a financial settlement with the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, an umbrella of major Jewish organisations including the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, B'nai B'rith, the Joint Distribution Committee. The claims conference was supposed to use the monies, Dollars 10m annually for 12 years, or about a billion dollars in current values, for Jewish victims of Nazi persecution who had fallen through the cracks in the compensation process. My mother was a case in point. A survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, Majdanek concentration camp and slave labour camps at Czestochowa and Skarszysko-Kamiena, she received only Dollars 3,500 in compensation from the German government. Other Jewish victims (and many who in fact were not victims), however, received lifetime pensions from Germany, eventually totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars. In a flagrant breach of its letter and spirit, the conference earmarked the monies not for the rehabilitation of Jewish victims who had received minimal compensation but for the rehabilitation of Jewish 'communities'. Indeed, a guiding principle of the claims conference prohibited use of monies for 'direct allocations to individuals'.
In a classic instance of looking after one's own, however, the conference provided exemptions for two categories of victims: rabbis and 'outstanding Jewish leaders' received individual payments. As the conference came under attack from defrauded Jews, Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg cast a plague on both sides, sneering that: 'It's not about justice, it's a fight for money.' When Germans or Swiss refuse to pay compensation, the heavens cannot contain the righteous indignation of organised American Jewry. But when Jewish elites rob Jewish survivors, no ethical issues arise: it's just about money.
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Finkelstein's claim: Jewish organisations are sitting on $1.25 billion paid over by the Swiss banks, none of which has been distributed to Holocaust victims.
Counter-claim: Although a settlement has been agreed no money has yet left Switzerland because the US courts have still to approve its distribution.
David Green’s Question: That was in 2000. How about an update? But if the issue is still in court, why so? Answer: Because the whole process has been so shamefully corrupt. See the excerpt below (from the British edition, with UK spelling):
Excerpt from the Holocaust Industry:
Others involved in the reparations process have also done well. The reported annual salary of Saul Kagan, long-time executive secretary of the claims conference, is Dollars 105,000. Kagan rings up in 12 days what my mother received for suffering six years of Nazi persecution.
In recent years, the Holocaust industry has become an outright extortion racket. Purporting to represent all of world Jewry, living and dead, it is laying claim to Holocaust-era Jewish assets throughout Europe. Fittingly dubbed the 'last chapter of the Holocaust', this double shakedown of European countries as well as legitimate Jewish claimants first targeted Switzerland. [After a protracted campaign which enlisted the American political establishment] the Swiss finally caved in 1998 and agreed to pay Dollars 1.25bn. 'The aim . . .' a Swiss bank's press release read, 'is to avert the threat of sanctions as well as long and costly court proceedings.'
Its solicitude for 'needy Holocaust survivors' notwithstanding, the World Jewish Congress wants nearly half the Swiss monies earmarked for Jewish organisations and 'Holocaust education'. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre maintains that if 'worthy' Jewish organisations receive monies, 'a portion should go to Jewish educational centres'. As they 'angle' for a bigger share of the loot, reform and orthodox organisations each claim that the 6m dead would have preferred their branch of Judaism as financial beneficiary.
Meanwhile, the Holocaust industry forced Switzerland into a settlement because time was allegedly of the essence: 'Needy Holocaust survivors are dying every day.' Once the Swiss signed away the money, however, the urgency miraculously passed. More than a year after the settlement was reached there was still no distribution plan. By the time the money is finally divvied out, all the 'needy Holocaust survivors' will probably be dead. In fact, by last December, less than half of the Dollars 200m 'Special Fund for Needy Victims of the Holocaust' established in February 1997 had been distributed to actual victims. After lawyers' fees have been paid, [total attorney fee demands for the case run to Dollars 15m] the Swiss monies will then flow into the coffers of 'worthy' Jewish organisations. The staggering dimensions of Hitler's Final Solution are by now well known. And isn't the 'normal' history of humankind replete with horrifying chapters of inhumanity? A crime need not be aberrant to warrant atonement. The challenge today is to restore the Nazi Holocaust as a rational subject of inquiry. Only then can we really learn from it. The abnormality of the Nazi Holocaust springs not from the event itself but from the exploitative industry that has grown up around it.
The Holocaust industry has always been bankrupt. What remains is to openly declare it so. The time is long past to put it out of business. The noblest gesture for those who perished is to preserve their memory, learn from their suffering and let them, finally, rest in peace.
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Finkelstein's claim: Most of the money will never go to individuals but to Jewish organisations.
Counter-claim: The division of the funds is yet to be agreed.
David Green’s Comment: Clearly, there are so few survivors remaining (see above) that it will not be disbursed in this manner, unless a free-for-all among descendants of survivors is permitted.
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Finkelstein's claim: Nobel prize-winning writer Elie Wiesel is a fraud saying that, after liberation from the camps at 18, he read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in Yiddish. Finkelstein says it was never published in Yiddish.
Counter-claim: It was published in Yiddish in Warsaw in 1929.
David Green’s Comment: If you click on the link below, you will see that it is The Critique of PRACTICAL Reason that was published in Yiddish in 1929. Nobody who was not lying would confuse having read one with the other. They are quite different books, thus proving that Wiesel is a not-too-creative liar at that.
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=6
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Finkelstein's claim: US academic Deborah Lipstadt said that to question the testimony of a survivor was Holocaust denial.
Counter-claim: Lipstadt denies having said any such thing.
David Green’s Comment: On page 70 of the Verso edition (2001), Finkelstein makes this statement and references Lipstadt’s Denying the Holocaust (6, 12, 22, 89-90). Since I’m sure David Gehrig has a copy of Lipstadt’s book, perhaps he can make the effort to resolve this issue, instead of relying on hearsay (see David Green's posts below). I feel that Lipstadt’s work is both useful and inappropriately alarmist, giving more publicity to deniers than they would otherwise have. In this manner, her work abets the Holocaust Industry and its unsavory aspects, and unfortunately she doesn’t seem to have much of a problem with that. Is there anyone who thinks that David Irving and his ilk are a genuine threat to one hair on any Jewish head (beyond making Lipstadt’s gray)? If so, let’s see the
evidence.
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Finkelstein's claim: Lawrence Eagleburger earns $300,000 a year as chair of the International Commission on Holocaust-Era Insurance claims, money that should be going to Holocaust victims.
Counter-claim: His salary is paid by the insurance companies not from compensation money.
David Green’s Comment: Surprise! Whoever pays him, nothing gets done! (see below) Even in this relatively minor instance, the Holocaust Industry is a magnet for fraud, lawyerly or otherwise.
From Wikipedia:
Eagleburger became chairman of the International Commission on Holocaust-Era Insurance Claims, or ICHEIC, which was set up in 1998. The purpose of the Commission was to resolve unpaid Nazi-era insurance claims for survivors of the Holocaust. In 2005 Eagleburger announced that the ICHEIC was offering approximately 16 million dollars to Holocaust victims and their heirs, noting as he did so the research ability of the ICHEIC staff which allowed them to evaluate claims from companies which no longer existed. In the years prior to this there had been some controversy about the Commission, including reports that it was over-budgeted and too slow, and that insurance companies which had previously agreed to work with the ICHEIC had failed to disclose policyholder lists. Eagleburger responded to these accusations by saying, among other things, that it was difficult to work quickly when many of the claimants lacked basic information such as the name of the insurance company involved.
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David Green’s final comment: By the way, who is going to compensate the Lebanese, the Palestinians, the Iraqis, etc., etc. Yes, the Holocaust was unique, in this respect. It not only provides booty for non-victims 60 years later, it’s also used to help justify the destruction of entire countries with impunity. After all, Iran is just another Nazi Germany just waiting to happen.
Norman Finkelstein's recent comment:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/30/1418200
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Former president of Italy, gave this speech praising Mussolini and saying all the charges against Mussolini were false, he was basically a good guy. Three weeks -- three weeks after he gave his speech -- and remember, Mussolini passed the Anti-Semitic Laws, at the end of his regime, sent Jews to their death. Three weeks after he gave his speech, the ADL, Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, who is now accusing Amnesty of borderline anti-Semitism, they gave him the distinguished Statesman of the Year Award, had a big gala for him, and even fairly conservative economists like Robert Solow, Paul Samuelson, Modigliani -- okay, they're not conservative by conventional standards -- mainstream economists. They wrote a very irate letter to the New York Times: Why is the ADL giving this guy an award? Well, the answer was simple. Because at that point, he was the only European leader who was very pro -- he was very pro-Israel. They don't care about Holocaust denial. They have no interest in it. |
This work is in the public domain |
Comments
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Stop lying, Green |
by gehrig
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
30 Aug 2006
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"Since I’m sure David Gehrig has a copy of Lipstadt’s book, perhaps he can make the effort to resolve this issue"
You know, I'd like to do that, because the Lipstadt thing is exactly the sort of stuff that shows how full of it Finkelstein really is once you get outside his reality distortion field. I know the Finkelstein vs. Lipstadt controversy very well -- in fact, his rancid performance there was the initial source of my deep disregard for him. But as I promised, Green, until you withdraw the bullshit allegation that I'm a "racist," I don't have a damned thing to say in reply to your posts except "stop lying."
@%< |
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Re: Gehrig vs. Finkelstein |
by David Green
davegreen84 (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
30 Aug 2006
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Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry:
p. 70: "To question a survivor's testimony, to denounce the role of Jewish collaborators, to suggest that Germans suffered during the bombing of Dresden or that any state in Germany committed crimes in World War II--this is all evidence, according to Lipstadt, of Holocaust denial."
Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust:
p. 6: "I am not suggesting that Pat Buchanan is a Holocaust denier. He has never publicly claimed that the Holocaust is a hoax. However, his attacks on the credibility of survivors testimony are standard elements of Holocaust denial. Buchanan's ready acceptance of this information and reliance on it to make his argument are disturbing, for this is how elements of Holocaust denial find their way into the general culture."
David Green's comment: Given Lipstadt's statement, Finkelstein's charge stands. If Buchanan should refrain from questioning the testimony of survivors, or be accused of helping elements of Holocaust denial "to find their way into the general culture." By questioning testimony, Lipstadt is accusing Buchanan of enabling Holocaust denial.
I'm not sure that this shows that Lipstadt help us to get outside NF's "reality distortion field" (whatever that means), but the reverse. |
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Re: Gehrig vs. Finkelstein |
by David Green
davegreen84 (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
30 Aug 2006
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David Green's comment: Given Lipstadt's statement, Finkelstein's charge stands. If Buchanan should refrain from questioning the testimony of survivors, lest he be guilty of helping elements of Holocaust denial "to find their way into the general culture," then he is being accused of facilitating denial. That is a distinction without much of a practical or moral difference, especially given the specter that Lipstadt raises regarding the potential consequences of denial. She compares the deniers to Hitler (p. 28):
"Adolf Hitler's rise to power was facilitated by by the artful way in which he advanced views of recent German history that appealed to the masses."
So who has the power to misuse history to evil ends at the moment: Is it deniers like David Irving, etc.--or is it George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, William Kristol, and Thomas Friedman? The last I checked, deniers don't have much of an army. |
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Re: Gehrig vs. Finkelstein |
by PLEASE!
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
31 Aug 2006
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Green needs to spend just a bit of time tending to an obsessive-compulsive disorder. The idea that he would put this much time and effort into attacking a single individual -- who has no significant effect on this or any other issue relative to the world stage -- is, in the end, just creepy. I would encourage the editors to make good on previous warnings and ban this kind of crap from the site. If these two antagonists want to settle their differences, let them do it in private. It's enough! |
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Re: Gehrig vs. Finkelstein |
by David Green
davegreen84 (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
31 Aug 2006
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test |
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Re: Gehrig vs. Finkelstein |
by David Green
davegreen84 (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
31 Aug 2006
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test test |
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Re: Gehrig vs. Finkelstein |
by David Green
davegreen84 (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
01 Sep 2006
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test |
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Re: Gehrig vs. Finkelstein |
by David Green
davegreen84 (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
02 Sep 2006
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I would hope that those interested enough to read about these issues would find this discourse useful. I’m not sure whose gun is being held to the head of the previous poster. At any rate, here's how Finkelstein treats Irving's work (Holocaust Industry, p. 71):
"Not all revisionist literature--however scurrilous the politics or motivations of its practitioners--is totally useless. Lipstadt brands David Irving 'one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial.' But Irving, notorious as an admirer of Hitler and sympathizer with German national socialism, has nevertheless, as Gordon Craig points out, made an 'indispensable' contribution to our knowledge of World War II. Both Arno Mayer, in his important study of the Nazi holocaust, and Raul Hilberg cite Holocaust denial publications. 'If these people want to speak, let them," Hilberg observes. 'It only leads those of us who do research to re-examine what we might have considered as obvious. And that's useful for us.'"
In a footnote (71-72) Finkelstein elaborates on Craig's (the dean of historians of modern Germany) views:
"Rightly dismissing Irving's claims on the Nazi holocaust as 'obtuse and quickly discredited,' Craig nonetheless continues: 'He knows more about National Socialism that most professional scholars in his field, and students of the years 1933-45 owe more than they are always willing to admit to his energy as a researcher and to the scope and vigor of his publications....His book Hitler's War...remains the best study we have of the German side of the Second World War and, as such, indispensable for all students of that conflict....Such people as David Irving, then, have an indispensable part in the historical enterprise, and we dare not disregard their views.'"
Here is Gehrig's summary of Finkelstein's views on Irving:
"When Finkelstein praises Holocaust denier David Irving, for example, he's actually praising Irving's earlier pop histories, the stuff from before Irving went off the deep end. Of course, Irving's early work turns out to be insupportably slapdash when examined closely. Finkelstein's limited praise for Irving doesn't mean he's a Holocaust denier, just that he's a bad judge of others' scholarship."
So what does this statement by Gehrig have to do with either Irving's work, or Finkelstein's evaluation of it (which is really a deferral to the evaluation of Hilberg, Craig, and Mayer, a triumvirate of respected scholars of the Holocaust and modern Germany)? Absolutely nothing, in my view. Gehrig’s views and tactics reflect Lipstadt’s, who doesn’t seem the least bit interested in how these historians distinguish between Irving the researcher and Irving the fanatic, and what it is about Irving’s work that compels them to take it seriously at a factual level while discrediting (without over-estimating the influence of) his political views. Lipstadt is more concerned with political posturing than political reality—although that doesn’t discredit the contribution she has made toward documenting the work of deniers. The value of that contribution, however, is microscopic in relation to Finkelstein’s work regarding the genuinely corrupting effects the Holocaust Industry and support for Zionist apartheid/racism has had on Jewish institutional life, not to mention American political life—not that the tail is wagging the dog.
Nothing personal, of course--just obsessing about what’s true. |
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Re: Gehrig vs. Finkelstein |
by So what about . . .
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
03 Sep 2006
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A question for Green: how do you feel about proposed reparations for African Americans in compensation for slavery. There are precisely zero survivors of that crime, according to NF's definition. |
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Re: Gehrig vs. Finkelstein |
by David Green
davegreen84 (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
04 Sep 2006
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Slavery was a part of almost 500 years of genocide and institutionalized racism, ongoing, which continues in the form of disparities of wealth, opportunity, and persistent discrimination, well documented. Reparations to African Americans should address the fundamental aspects of institutionalized racism, primarily through public spending. I'm not sure that anyone is proposing that blacks be compensated at an individual level. The "wages of whiteness" need to be countered at a collective level.
Reparations for Jews were never intended to compensate for the history of anti-semitism, whatever the economic consequences may have been (obviously more varied than slavery). They were intended to compensate survivors of Nazi Germany's death camps and slave labor camps for pain and suffering, as well as confsicated property. This was done by postwar Germany. There are no institutiuonal issues that need to be addressed by reparations (except the greed of Jewish institutions like the World Jewish Congress). That is why the Industry has to keep beating the drum of gold, insurance policies, savings, etc., well beyond the suffering of vicitms who have either already been compensated, are dead, or both. |
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