The Holocaust Industry (12 page)

"Hitler's Ghost," in
Vanity Fair Jume
1996) (Hilberg). For a balanced assessment of Irving, see

Gordon A. Craig, "The Devil in the Details," in
New York Review of Books (19
September 1996).

Rightly dismissing Irving's claims on the Nazi holocaust as "obtuse and quickly discredited," Craig

nonetheless continues: "He knows more about National Socialism than most professional scholars in

his field, and students of the years 1933-1945 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 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."

61
For the abortive attempts between 1984 and 1994 to build a national AfricanAmerican museum on

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the Washington Mall, see Fath Davis Ruffins, "Culture Wars Won and Lost, Part II The National

African-American Museum Project," in
Radical History Review
(winter 1998). The Congressional

initiative was finally killed by Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina. The Washington Holocaust

museum's annual budget is $50 million, of which $30 million is federally subsidized.

62
For background, see Linenthal,
Preserving Memory,
Saidel,
Never Too Late,
asp. chaps 7, 15, and

Tim Cole,
Selling the Holocaust
(New York: 1999), chap. 6.

63
Michael Berenbaum,
The World Must Know
(New York: 1993), 2, 214. Omer Bartov,
Murder In

Our Midst
(Oxford: 1996), 180.

64
For details, see Kati Marton,
A Death in Jerusalem
(New York: 1994), chap. 9. In his memoir

Wiesel recalls the "legendary 'terrorist' past" of Bernadotte's actual assassin, Yehoshua Cohen. Note

the inverted commas around terrorist. (Wiesel,
And the Sea,
58) The New York City Holocaust

Museum, although no less mired in politics (both Mayor Ed Koch and Governor Mario Cuomo were

courting Jewish votes and money), was also from early on a plaything of local Jewish developers and

financiers. At one point, developers sought to downplay "Holocaust" in the museum's name for fear

that it would depress property values in the adjacent luxury housing complex. Wags quipped that the

complex should be named "Treblinka Towers," and the surrounding streets "Auschwitz Avenue" and

"Birkenau Boulevard." The museum solicited funds from J. Peter Grace despite revelations of his

association with a convicted Nazi war criminal, and it organized a gala at The Hot Rod — "The New

York Holocaust Memorial Commission invites you to Rock and Roll the Night Away." (Saidel,
Never

Too Late,
8, 121, 132, 145, 158, 161, 191, 240)

65
Novick dubs this the "6 million" versus "11 million" controversy. The 5 million figure for

non-Jewish civilian deaths apparently originated with famed "Nazi-hunter" Simon Wiesenthal. Noting

that it "makes no historical sense," Novick writes, "Five million is either much too low (for all

non-Jewish civilians killed by the Third Reich) or much too high (for non-Jewish groups targeted, like

Jews, for murder)." He hastens to add, however, that "what's at stake, of course, is not numbers as

such, but what we mean, what we're referring to, when we talk of 'the Holocaust."' Strangely, after

entering this caveat, Novick supports commemorating only Jews because the 6 million figure

"describes something specific and determinate," while the 11 million figure "is unacceptably mushy."

(Novick,
The Holocaust,
214 - 26)

66
Wiesel,
Against Silence, v.
hi. 162, 166.

67
For the handicapped as Nazism's first genocidal victims, see esp. Henry Friedlander,
The Origins

of Nazi Genocide
(Chapel Hill: 1995). According to Leon Wieseltier, the non-Jews who perished at

Auschwitz "died a death invented for the Jews . . . victims of a 'solution' designed for others" (Leon

Wieseltier, "At Auschwitz Decency Dies Again," in
New York Times
[3 September 1989]). Yet, as

numerous scholarly studies show, it was the death invented for handicapped Germans that was then

inflicted on Jews; in addition to Friedlander's study, see, for example, Michael Burleigh,
Death and

Deliverance
(Cambridge: 1994).

68
See Guenter Lewy,
The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies
(Oxford 2000), 221 - 2, for various

estimates of Gypsies killed.

69
Friedlander,
Origins:
"AIongside Jews, the Nazis murdered the European Gypsies. Defined as a

'dark-skinned' racial group, Gypsy men, women and children could not escape their fate as victims of

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Nazi genocide.... [T]he Nazi regime systematically murdered only three groups of human beings: the

handicapped, Jews, and Gypsies" (xii—xiii). (Apart from being a first-rate historian, Friedlander is

also a former Auschwitz inmate.) Raul Hilberg,
The Destruction of the European Jews
(New York:

1985) (in three volumes), v. iii, 999-1000. With his usual veracity, Wiesel claims disappointment m

his memoir that the Holocaust Memorial Coumcil, which he chaired, didn't include a Gypsy

representative — as if he had been powerless to nominate one. (Wiesel,
And the Sea,
211)

70
Linenthal,
Preserving Memory,
241 - 6, 315.

71
Although the New York City Holocaust Museum's "particularistic Jewish bent" (Saidel) was even

more pronounced — non-Jewish victims of Nazism early on received notice that it was "for Jews

only" — Yehuda Bauer flew into a rage at the Commission's mere hint that the Holocaust

encompassed more than Jewish losses. "Unless this is immediately and radically changed," Bauer

threatened in a letter to Commission members, "I shall take every opportunity to . . . attack this

outrageous design from every public platform I have." (Saidel,
Never Too Late,
125 - 6, 129, 212, 221,

224 - 5)

72
For background, see Finkelstem,
Image and Reality,
chap. 2.

73
"ZOA Criticizes Holocaust Museum's Hiring of Professor Who Compared Israel to Nazis," in

Israel Wire
(5 Jume 1998). Neal M. Sher, "Sweep the Holocaust Museum Clean," in
Jewish World

Review
(22 June 1998). "Scoundrel Time," in
PS—The Intellectual Guide to Jewish Affairs
(21 August

1998). Daniel Kurtzman, "Holocaust Museum Taps One of Its Own for Top Spot," in
Jewish

Telegraphic Agency
(5 March 1999). Ira Stoll, "Holocaust Museum Acknowledges a Mistake," in

Forward
(13 August 1999).

74
Noam Chomsky,
World Orders Old and New
(New York: 1996), 293 - 4 (Shavit).

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Chapter 3

THE DOUBLE SHAKEDOWN

The term "Holocaust survivor" originally designated those who suffered the unique trauma of the

Jewish ghettos, concentration camps and slave labor camps, often in sequence. The figure for these

Holocaust survivors at war's end is generally put at some 100,000.
1
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.
2
"If everyone who claims to be a survivor actually is

one," my mother used to exclaim, "who did Hitler kill?"

Indeed, many scholars have cast doubt on the reliability of survivor testimony. "A great percentage of

the mistakes I discovered in my own work," Hilberg recalls, "could be attributed to testimonies." 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.
3

Apart from the frailties of memory, some Holocaust survivor testimony may be suspect for additional

reasons. 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 eighteen years old, "I read
The Critique of Pure Reason

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—
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. Wiesel

also remembers in intricate detail a "mysterious Talmudic scholar" who "mastered Hungarian in two

weeks, just to surprise me." Wiesel tells a Jewish weekly that he "often gets hoarse or loses his voice"

as he silently reads his books to himself "aloud, inwardly." And to a
New York Times
reporter, he

recalls that he was once hit by a taxi in Times Square. "I flew an entire block. I was hit at 45th Street

and Broadway, and the ambulance picked me up at 44th" "The truth I present is unvarnished," "Wiesel

sighs, "I cannot do otherwise."
4

In recent years, "Holocaust survivor" has been redefined to designate not only those who endured but

also those who managed to evade the Nazis. It includes, for example, more than 100,000 Polish Jews

who found refuge in the Soviet Union after the Nazi invasion of Poland. However, "those who had

lived in Russia had not been treated differently than citizens of the country," historian Leonard

Dinnerstein observes, while "the survivors of the concentration camps looked like the living dead."
5

One contributor to a Holocaust web site maintained that, although he spent the war in Tel Aviv, he

was a Holocaust survivor because his grandmother died in Auschwitz. To judge by Israel Gutman,

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 fact, Wilkomirski's main

accomplices were, in one way or another, tapped into the Holocaust reparations network. His

childhood friend from Auschwitz, "little Laura," collected money from a Swiss Holocaust fund

although in reality she was an American-born frequenter of satanic cults. His chief Israeli sponsors

were active in or subsidized by organizations involved in Holocaust compensation.
6

The reparations issue provides unique insight into the Holocaust industry. As we have seen, aligning