The Holocaust Industry: the book
Giovanni De Martis
Finkelstein’s work “The holocaust Industry” is a small book of about 150 pages, divided into three chapters. In the first chapter, Finkelstein maintains that the subject of the Holocaust was totally overlooked within the context of the cold war. The struggle between the two blocks – communist and capitalist – made the memory of the Holocaust “politically inappropriate” in view of the re-birth of West Germany, which was part of the “free world”. Only after the Arab-Israeli conflict in 1967 – according to the author -, the Holocaust became a tool for political propaganda. And a powerful weapon for pressure. The general objective that created the “Holocaust industry” was, at the time, the will to gain access to the “nerve centre” of US democracy. Israel, on the other hand, had become America’s “best friend” in the Middle East. Reaching the heart of American power, and stably maintaining such position – that was the goal of U.S. Jewish organizations.
This sort of Jewish plot reveals all its alleged power in the second chapter of the pamphlet. Finkelstein engages in revealing the function and use of the Holocaust “dogmas”: the so-called “uniqueness” of the Holocaust, and the alleged eternal hate of non-Jews towards Jews. The idea that the Holocaust is a unique event in human history, not comparable to any other similar event, would have been conceived in Elie Wiesel’s writings. This would be a cinical theory, functional to the “Holocaust industry” itself. Its purpose should be that of placing the Jews in a position of superiority with respect to all other persecuted peoples. A gigantic lie, whose goal should be minimizing other people’s suffering in order to blow up their own, for political purposes. Demonstrating the uniqueness of the Shoah would make it possible to move over to the third stage of this new Jewish plot: obtaining the money. Once the uniqueness and unrepeatability of Jewish suffering has been demonstrated, organizations move on to collectingg. The financial exploitation of the Shoah is the subject of the third and last chapter of Finkelstein’s work. This exploitation would have taken on the connotation of an extortion, at the expense of two groups of victims: us Europeans and almost all the Jews who should have been entitled to compensation. But the American Jewish organizations are not only depicted as a “gang” of moral blackmailers; they are also described as a bunch of fools, In their infinite greed, they would have inflated the figures of survivors, in order to obtain more money. Thus the number of victims would proportionally decrease. This operation would have opened the doors for negationists, providing an enormous opportunity for their propaganda. According to Finkelstein, elimination of the “dogmas” created by the “Holocaust industry” hindered clear and full knowledge of the Nazi phenomenon and of the tragedy itself.		The Holocaust Industry: the book by Giovanni De Martis From the book to the interview by Giovanni De Martis The interview