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Authors: Norman Finkelstein
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Goldhagen's thesis is right or wrong," Metropolitan associate
publisher Sara Bershtel replied, "is precisely the issue."
Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of the pro-lsrael New Republic, intervened personally with Holt
president Michael Naumann. "You don't know who Finkelstein is. He's poison, he's a disgusting
The Holocaust Industry: HOAXERS, HUCKSTERS AND HISTORY
http://www.geocities.com/holocaustindustry/chapter_2.html (9 of 20) [23/11/2000 15:47:20]
self-hating Jew, he's something you find under a rock." Pronouncing Holt's decision a "disgrace," Elan
Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress, opined, "If they want to be garbagemen
they should wear sanitation uniforms."
"I have never experienced," Naumann later recalled, "a similar attempt of interested parties to publicly
cast a shadow over an upcoming publication." The prominent Israeli historian and journalist, Tom
Segev, observed in Haaretz that the campaign verged on "cultural terrorism."
As chief historian of the War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Section of the Canadian
Department of Justice, Birn next came under attack from Canadian Jewish organizations. Claiming
that I was "anathema to the vast majority of Jews on this continent," the Canadian Jewish Congress
denounced Birn's collaboration in the book. Exerting pressure through her employer, the CJC filed a
protest with the Justice Department. This complaint, joined to a CJC-backed report calling Birn "a
member of the perpetrator race" (she is German-born), prompted an official investigation of her.
Even after the book's publication, the ad hominem assaults did not let up. Goldhagen alleged that Birn,
who has made the prosecution of Nazi war criminals her life's work, was a purveyor of anti-Semitism,
and that I was of the opinion that Nazism's victims, including my own family, deserved to died
Goldhagen's colleagues at the Harvard Center for European Studies, Stanley Hoffmann and Charles
Maier, publicly lined up behind him. 49
Calling the charges of censorship a "canard," The New Republic maintained that "there is a difference
between censorship and upholding standards." A Nation on Trial received endorsements from the
leading historians on the Nazi holocaust, including Raul Hilberg, Christopher Browning and Ian
Kershaw. These same scholars uniformly dismissed Goldhagen's book; Hilberg called it "worthless."
Standards, indeed.
Consider, finally, the pattern: Wiesel and Gutman supported Goldhagen; Wiesel supported Kosinski;
Gutman and Goldhagen supported Wilkomirski. Connect the players: this is Holocaust literature.
All the hype notwithstanding, there is no evidence that Holocaust deniers exert any more influence in
the United States than the flatearth society does. Given the nonsense churned out daily by the
Holocaust industry, the wonder is that there are so few skeptics. The motive behind the claim of
widespread Holocaust denial is not hard to find. In a society saturated with The Holocaust, how else to
justify yet more museums, books, curricula, films and programs than to conjure up the bogy of
Holocaust denial? Thus Deborah Lipstadt's acclaimed book, Denying the Holocaust, 50 as well as the
results of an ineptly worded American Jewish Committee poll alleging pervasive Holocaust denial, 51
were released just as the Washington Holocaust Memorial Museum opened.
Denying the Holocaust is an updated version of the "new anti-Semitism" tracts. To document
widespread Holocaust denial, Lipstadt cites a handful of crank publications. Her piece de resistance is
Arthur Butz, a nonentity who teaches electrical engineering at Northwestern University and who
published his book The Hoax of the Twentieth Century with an obscure press. Lipstadt entitles the
chapter on him Entering the Mainstream." Were it not for the likes of Lipstadt, no one would ever
have heard of Arthur Butz.
In fact, the one truly mainstream holocaust denier is Bernard Lewis. A French court
publisher Sara Bershtel replied, "is precisely the issue."
Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of the pro-lsrael New Republic, intervened personally with Holt
president Michael Naumann. "You don't know who Finkelstein is. He's poison, he's a disgusting
The Holocaust Industry: HOAXERS, HUCKSTERS AND HISTORY
http://www.geocities.com/holocaustindustry/chapter_2.html (9 of 20) [23/11/2000 15:47:20]
self-hating Jew, he's something you find under a rock." Pronouncing Holt's decision a "disgrace," Elan
Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress, opined, "If they want to be garbagemen
they should wear sanitation uniforms."
"I have never experienced," Naumann later recalled, "a similar attempt of interested parties to publicly
cast a shadow over an upcoming publication." The prominent Israeli historian and journalist, Tom
Segev, observed in Haaretz that the campaign verged on "cultural terrorism."
As chief historian of the War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Section of the Canadian
Department of Justice, Birn next came under attack from Canadian Jewish organizations. Claiming
that I was "anathema to the vast majority of Jews on this continent," the Canadian Jewish Congress
denounced Birn's collaboration in the book. Exerting pressure through her employer, the CJC filed a
protest with the Justice Department. This complaint, joined to a CJC-backed report calling Birn "a
member of the perpetrator race" (she is German-born), prompted an official investigation of her.
Even after the book's publication, the ad hominem assaults did not let up. Goldhagen alleged that Birn,
who has made the prosecution of Nazi war criminals her life's work, was a purveyor of anti-Semitism,
and that I was of the opinion that Nazism's victims, including my own family, deserved to died
Goldhagen's colleagues at the Harvard Center for European Studies, Stanley Hoffmann and Charles
Maier, publicly lined up behind him. 49
Calling the charges of censorship a "canard," The New Republic maintained that "there is a difference
between censorship and upholding standards." A Nation on Trial received endorsements from the
leading historians on the Nazi holocaust, including Raul Hilberg, Christopher Browning and Ian
Kershaw. These same scholars uniformly dismissed Goldhagen's book; Hilberg called it "worthless."
Standards, indeed.
Consider, finally, the pattern: Wiesel and Gutman supported Goldhagen; Wiesel supported Kosinski;
Gutman and Goldhagen supported Wilkomirski. Connect the players: this is Holocaust literature.
All the hype notwithstanding, there is no evidence that Holocaust deniers exert any more influence in
the United States than the flatearth society does. Given the nonsense churned out daily by the
Holocaust industry, the wonder is that there are so few skeptics. The motive behind the claim of
widespread Holocaust denial is not hard to find. In a society saturated with The Holocaust, how else to
justify yet more museums, books, curricula, films and programs than to conjure up the bogy of
Holocaust denial? Thus Deborah Lipstadt's acclaimed book, Denying the Holocaust, 50 as well as the
results of an ineptly worded American Jewish Committee poll alleging pervasive Holocaust denial, 51
were released just as the Washington Holocaust Memorial Museum opened.
Denying the Holocaust is an updated version of the "new anti-Semitism" tracts. To document
widespread Holocaust denial, Lipstadt cites a handful of crank publications. Her piece de resistance is
Arthur Butz, a nonentity who teaches electrical engineering at Northwestern University and who
published his book The Hoax of the Twentieth Century with an obscure press. Lipstadt entitles the
chapter on him Entering the Mainstream." Were it not for the likes of Lipstadt, no one would ever
have heard of Arthur Butz.
In fact, the one truly mainstream holocaust denier is Bernard Lewis. A French court
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