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Authors: Norman Finkelstein
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landmark" (Richard Bernstein). With sales of half a million copies and
translations slated for 13 languages, Hitler's Willing Executioners was hailed in Time magazine as the
"most talked about" and second best nonfiction book of the year. 45
The Holocaust Industry: HOAXERS, HUCKSTERS AND HISTORY
http://www.geocities.com/holocaustindustry/chapter_2.html (8 of 20) [23/11/2000 15:47:20]
Pointing to the "remarkable research," and "wealth of proof . . . with overwhelming support of
documents and facts," Elie Wiesel heralded Hitler's Willing Executioners as a "tremendous
contribution to the understanding and teaching of the Holocaust." Israel Gutman praised it for "raising
anew clearly central questions" that "the main body of Holocaust scholarship" ignored. Nominated for
the Holocaust chair at Harvard University, paired with Wiesel in the national media, Goldhagen
quickly became a ubiquitous presence on the Holocaust circuit.
The central thesis of Goldhagen's book is standard Holocaust dogma: driven by pathological hatred,
the German people leapt at the opportunity Hitler availed them to murder the Jews. Even leading
Holocaust writer Yehuda Bauer, a lecturer at the Hebrew University and director of Yad Vashem, has
at times embraced this dogma. Reflecting several years ago on the perpetrators' mindset, Bauer wrote:
"The Jews were murdered by people who, to a large degree, did not actually hate them.... The
Germans did not have to hate the Jews in order to kill them." Yet, in a recent review of Goldhagen's
book, Bauer maintained the exact opposite: "The most radical type of murderous attitudes dominated
from the end of the 1930s onward.... [B]y the outbreak of World War II the vast majority of Germans
had identified with the regime and its anti-Semitic policies to such an extent that it was easy to recruit
the murderers." Questioned about this discrepancy, Bauer replied: "I cannot see any contradiction
between these statements." 46
Although bearing the apparatus of an academic study, Hitler's Willing Executioners amounts to little
more than a compendium of sadistic violence. Small wonder that Goldhagen vigorously championed
Wilkomirski: Hitler's Willing Executioners is Fragments plus footnotes. Replete with gross
misrepresentations of source material and internal contradictions, Hitler's Willing Executioners is
devoid of scholarly value. In A Nation on Trial, Ruth Bettina Birn and this writer documented the
shoddiness of Goldhagen's enterprise. The ensuing controversy instructively illuminated the inner
workings of the Holocaust industry.
Birn, the world's leading authority on the archives Goldhagen consulted, first published her critical
findings in the Cambridge Historical Journal. Refusing the journal's invitation for a full rebuttal,
Goldhagen instead enlisted a high-powered London law firm to sue Birn and Cambridge University
Press for "many serious libels." Demanding an apology, a retraction, and a promise from Birn that she
not repeat her criticisms, Goldhagen's lawyers then threatened that "the generation of any publicity on
your part as a result of this letter would amount to a further aggravation of damages." 47
Soon after this writer's equally critical findings were published in New Left Review, Metropolitan, an
imprint of Henry Holt, agreed to publish both essays as a book. In a front-page story, the Forward
warned that Metropolitan was "preparing to bring out a book by Norman Finkelstein, a notorious
ideological opponent of the State of Israel." The Forward acts as the main enforcer of "Holocaust
correctness" in the United States.
Alleging that "Finkelstein's glaring bias and audacious statements . . . are irreversibly tainted by his
anti-Zionist stance," ADL head Abraham Foxman called on Holt to drop publication of the book: "The
issue . . . is not whether Goldhagen's thesis is right or wrong but what is 'legitimate criticism' and what
goes beyond the pale." "Whether
translations slated for 13 languages, Hitler's Willing Executioners was hailed in Time magazine as the
"most talked about" and second best nonfiction book of the year. 45
The Holocaust Industry: HOAXERS, HUCKSTERS AND HISTORY
http://www.geocities.com/holocaustindustry/chapter_2.html (8 of 20) [23/11/2000 15:47:20]
Pointing to the "remarkable research," and "wealth of proof . . . with overwhelming support of
documents and facts," Elie Wiesel heralded Hitler's Willing Executioners as a "tremendous
contribution to the understanding and teaching of the Holocaust." Israel Gutman praised it for "raising
anew clearly central questions" that "the main body of Holocaust scholarship" ignored. Nominated for
the Holocaust chair at Harvard University, paired with Wiesel in the national media, Goldhagen
quickly became a ubiquitous presence on the Holocaust circuit.
The central thesis of Goldhagen's book is standard Holocaust dogma: driven by pathological hatred,
the German people leapt at the opportunity Hitler availed them to murder the Jews. Even leading
Holocaust writer Yehuda Bauer, a lecturer at the Hebrew University and director of Yad Vashem, has
at times embraced this dogma. Reflecting several years ago on the perpetrators' mindset, Bauer wrote:
"The Jews were murdered by people who, to a large degree, did not actually hate them.... The
Germans did not have to hate the Jews in order to kill them." Yet, in a recent review of Goldhagen's
book, Bauer maintained the exact opposite: "The most radical type of murderous attitudes dominated
from the end of the 1930s onward.... [B]y the outbreak of World War II the vast majority of Germans
had identified with the regime and its anti-Semitic policies to such an extent that it was easy to recruit
the murderers." Questioned about this discrepancy, Bauer replied: "I cannot see any contradiction
between these statements." 46
Although bearing the apparatus of an academic study, Hitler's Willing Executioners amounts to little
more than a compendium of sadistic violence. Small wonder that Goldhagen vigorously championed
Wilkomirski: Hitler's Willing Executioners is Fragments plus footnotes. Replete with gross
misrepresentations of source material and internal contradictions, Hitler's Willing Executioners is
devoid of scholarly value. In A Nation on Trial, Ruth Bettina Birn and this writer documented the
shoddiness of Goldhagen's enterprise. The ensuing controversy instructively illuminated the inner
workings of the Holocaust industry.
Birn, the world's leading authority on the archives Goldhagen consulted, first published her critical
findings in the Cambridge Historical Journal. Refusing the journal's invitation for a full rebuttal,
Goldhagen instead enlisted a high-powered London law firm to sue Birn and Cambridge University
Press for "many serious libels." Demanding an apology, a retraction, and a promise from Birn that she
not repeat her criticisms, Goldhagen's lawyers then threatened that "the generation of any publicity on
your part as a result of this letter would amount to a further aggravation of damages." 47
Soon after this writer's equally critical findings were published in New Left Review, Metropolitan, an
imprint of Henry Holt, agreed to publish both essays as a book. In a front-page story, the Forward
warned that Metropolitan was "preparing to bring out a book by Norman Finkelstein, a notorious
ideological opponent of the State of Israel." The Forward acts as the main enforcer of "Holocaust
correctness" in the United States.
Alleging that "Finkelstein's glaring bias and audacious statements . . . are irreversibly tainted by his
anti-Zionist stance," ADL head Abraham Foxman called on Holt to drop publication of the book: "The
issue . . . is not whether Goldhagen's thesis is right or wrong but what is 'legitimate criticism' and what
goes beyond the pale." "Whether
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