The Holocaust Industry: The Abuse of Jewish Victims

It was clearly exaggerated, sentimentalist nonsense. I began to think a little more independently about the issue, but had nowhere to turn for a more balanced view.

One day, Amazon's recommendations system suggested this book to me, and I bought it at once. Having read it, I'm delighted to be able to recommend it unreservedly as exactly the book I needed.

Finkelstein does not deny the Nazi holocaust, nor the suffering it inflicted on both those it killed, and on those who survived. His contention - persuasively argued - is that their genuine suffering is being debased and abused by the Holocaust "industry" in order to bring political power and huge sums of money to an elite minority.

He also points out that by labelling the Holocaust with false superlatives, one belittles the plight of others who have suffered comparably awful genocide and victimisation, both in World War II and throughout history.

The book is well written. Finkelstein occasionally personalises the debate, or becomes less than dispassionate, but I never once felt this damaged his objectivity. He quotes sources throughout the book - in many cases his opponents are condemned by their own tongues.

It is time the media stopped pandering to the abusive interests of the Holocaust Industry, time they took a more balanced, more critical and less sensationalist view. Billions of dollars are being extorted from governments (even those that can hardly afford it, such as Poland's) by the playing of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism cards. This is unjust.

Buy this book. Read it. Tell your friends about it.


A profoundly troubling work both provocative and alarming.   February 25, 2001
45 out of 47 found this review helpful

With the exception of Noam Chomsky it has been a long time since anyone attempted a deconstruction of an American power elite along the lines of C. Wright Mill's famous study. The present author attempts to step into the breach. Finkelstein is concerned with the relationship between the collective American Jewish self image and how that image is mediated and bolstered through a plethora of devices (from compensation claims to educational trips)originating from the impact of the Nazi Holocaust. Many readers will wince at phrases such as 'organised American Jewry'and one from another source that 'Jews are better', as they have uncomfortable connotations in European life - on occasion I had to check myself from saying only a Jewish academic could make these points. Finkelstein's main arguments are (a) that American Jewry (or that aspect he portrays)has used the tragedy of the Holocaust as a means of morally, and on occasion even financially, terrorising critics into silence, (b) the 'uniqueness' of the Holocaust is to the contrary purely historically relative, and (c) that the suffering of nonJewsish victims of the Nazis has largely been set aside, especially when financial settlements are being pursued. His castigation of various Holocaust organisations as a cynical self serving 'industry' is unstinting, and his contrasting of the reception given to Jewish concerns by successive Administrations, in contrast to Black America's treatment, is grim reading. Finkelstein furnishes copious notes throughout the book, which are very useful. Two subcurrents emerge in the book which are never fully debated (and weaken its central theses to an extent). Firstly Finkelstein argues that 'organised American Jewry' has used the ethnicity of the Holocaust to put itself beyond criticism and inter alia Israel. All criticism of Jewish ideology is therefore antisemitic and one can never ask if antisemitism was/is in any way influenced by Jewish practices, i.e. antisemitism is really another expression of economic conflicts of interests. Finkelstein leaves this very contentious issue undeveloped and it is a definite weakness in the text. Secondly, he dismisses the uniqueness of the Holocaust, citing other exterminations that have occurred through history, yet he leaves unanalysed the motive for the Nazi extermination campaign deferring to Raul Hilburg's work instead. If the book is reprinted it would be helpful to have these issues examined clearly.

In conclusion I found this a very arresting book. Perhaps unnecessarily polemical in parts, but passionately argued. Confrontational and courageous yes, but arguably it needs more detail on the points above to substantiate its many charges. Essential reading for those on the Left and Right who really believe in a family of mankind where ethnicity has no role, except an accidental one.


The Holocaust Industry   August 11, 2000
23 out of 24 found this review helpful

The thrust of Professor Finkelstein's unsettling book is that powerful interests (Israel and Jewish organizations in America) have hijacked what has become known as the holocaust. And while Israel has exploited the holocaust as a weapon to deflect criticism, regardless how justified, American Jewish organizations have used the plight of supposedly needy survivors to extort staggering sums of money from the rest of the world. This was done not for the benefit of survivors, but for the financial advantage of these organizations.

There are no conclusions reached in Professor Finkelstein's book that a careful reader of daily newspapers could not have reached, assuming the reader could read between the lines and base his judgment on evidence and common sense rather than the politically correct slant of the media reporting...

The bottom line of Finkelstein's book is that it says what was very long overdue to be said. But few academics have the courage or intellectual fortitude to weather the defamation campaign that will predictably descend on anyone who challenges this multi-billion dollar industry...

I recommend the advice Nietzsche gave his readers 130 years ago: "If you want to know something about a book or its author, read what HE wrote rather than what his critics or enemies have to say about him."...


a tour de force   June 20, 2007
cmdrdeathguts (Plymouth uk)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful

For the various political currents of Zionism, Norman Finkelstein is a particularly terrifying foe - his polemical edge had me wincing with delight; his holocaust-survivor parents deflect the crude character assassinations so favoured of the ADL; and most of all, his rare erudition and sharp scholarship, which has won plaudits from such luminaries as Raul Hilberg (who uses much of the present work's research, citing it as a "breakthrough"), presents a serious intellectual challenge. Not many people could commit themselves to proving Alan Dershowitz's wholesale lifting of research on a footnote by footnote basis, but Finkelstein does it in another book, and he has you chuckling all the way at the sheer audacity of it all.

The case for the book has already been made, so I simply wish to briefly correct "a reader"'s complaints that "The Holocaust Industry" is a "polemical barrage" which "lacks context" and is inferior to the more nucanced approach of Peter Novick. This does not note that Finkelstein both refers to and criticises Novick in this work, criticisms unaddressed by comrade 'reader'. It also ignores the fact that nuance is not always desirable - there was nothing "nuanced" about Hitler's policy of mass extermination, for a start, and the Holocaust Industry's record, while obviously not nearly as horrendous as Hitler's, is no more possessed of shades of grey. In fact, Finkelstein's whole thesis is that this all represents an attempt to introduce shades of grey artificially into a fairly black and white issue - the ethnic cleansing and subsequent occupation of Palestinians by the state of Israel.


bravo   October 26, 2000
Gaffer (UK)
22 out of 25 found this review helpful

At last, somebody who speaks with authority on a taboo subject which others dare not touch for fear of being called Nazi's / anti-semites. Superbly well researched, I don't think I can add any more plaudits than those already written below.