The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering - Hardcover

"Finkelstein's downright pugilistic book delivers a wallop."--"LA Weekly""The most explosive book of the year."--"The Guardian""A lucid, provocative and passionate book."--"New Statesman""His basic argument that memories of the Holocaust are being debased is serious and should be given its due."--"The Economist""[S]cathing in his denunciation of the institutions and individuals who have cropped up around the issue of reparations."--"New York Press""Finkelstein has raised some important and uncomfortable issues."--"The Jewish Quarterly"

In this study, the author interrogates the conventional accounts of the place the Holocaust has come to occupy in American culture. 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 at the beginning of the 21st century. Leaders of America's Jewish community were delighted that Israel was now deemed a major strategic asset and, the author contends, explotied the Holocaust to enhance this new-found status. Their subsequent interpretation 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 fraudsters such as Jerzy Kosinski and Binyamin Wilkomirski, as well as the demogogic constructions of writers like Daniel Goldenhagen, the author contends that the main danger posed to the memory of Nazism's victims comes not from the rubbish the Holocaust deniers promulgate but from prominent, self-proclaimed guardians of Holocaust memory.