Product Description

In an iconoclastic and controversial new study, Norman Finkelstein moves from an interrogation of the place the Holocaust has come to occupy in American culture to a disturbing examination of recent Holocaust compensation agreements.

It was not until the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, when Israel's evident strength brought it into line with US foreign policy, that memory of the Holocaust began to acquire the exceptional prominence it enjoys today. Leaders of America's Jewish community were delighted that Israel was now deemed a major strategic asset and, Finkelstein contends, exploited the Holocaust to enhance this new-found status. Their subsequent interpretations of the tragedy are often at variance with actual historical events and are employed to deflect any criticism of Israel and its supporters.

Recalling Holocaust hoaxers such as Jerzy Kosinski and Binjamin Wilkomirski, as well as the demagogic constructions of writers like Daniel Goldenhagen, Finkelstien contends that the main danger posed to the memory of Nazism's victims comes not from the distortions of Holocaust deniers but from self-proclaimed guardians of Holocaust memory. Drawing on a wealth of untapped sources he exposes the double shakedown of European countries as well as legitimate Jewish claimants, and concludes that the Holocaust industry has become and outright extortion racket. Thoroughly researched and closely argued, The Holocaust Industry is all the more disturbing and powerful because the issues it deals with are so rarely discussed.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #62378 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 286 pages

Synopsis
A bestseller throughout Europe, the Middle East and the Americas, and already translated into sixteen languages, The holocaust Industry was hailed by the Guardian newspaper in London as "the most controversial book of the year" when it was originally published in 2000. in a devastating postscript for this second paperback edition, Norman G. Finkelstein documents the Holocaust industries scandalous cover-up of the blackmail of Swiss Banks, and in a new appendix demolishes the influential apologia for the Holocaust industry.

About the Author
Norman Finkelstein teaches at the City University of New York and contributes to the London Review of Books, He is the author of Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict and (with Bettina Birn) A Nation on Trial, named a notable book for 1998 by the New York Times Book Review.