Marc Ellis book review: The Holocaust and the Trivialisation of Memory

[This review will appear in the quarterly journal Global Dialogue, volume 2, number 4, autumn 2000]

MARC H. ELLIS

The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering
by norman g. finkelstein
London, Verso, 2000. 150 pages
Hardback: UK £16, US $23

Marc H. Ellis is professor of American and Jewish Studies at Baylor University, Waco, Texas. His many books include Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation (Orbis, 1987), Unholy Alliance: Religion and Atrocity in Our Time (Fortress Press, 1997) and Revolutionary Forgiveness: Essays on Judaism, Christianity, and the Future of Religious Life (Baylor University Press, 2000).

I first met Norman Finkelstein in Boston at a conference on Palestinian refugees this spring. I had read several of his books, including the provocative and moving The Rise and Fall of Palestine. As a person writing about Jewish history and the plight of the Palestinians, I found Finkelstein's chronicles of the intifada and the Palestinians' aborted struggle for a full and equal state alongside Israel insightful and well written. Interweaving his own journey as a child of Holocaust survivors, his narrative was gripping. He brought to the surface what I increasingly had become aware of in my own life: that many Jews had crossed over into solidarity with the Palestinian people and that more than a few of those who had done this were children of Holocaust survivors.

I had heard Finkelstein speak several times before the Boston conference and was determined at least to greet him this time. After all, he and I were often linked together in the minds of the Jewish establishment, as we were both ardent critics of the policies of the state of Israel regarding Palestinians, and also seen as comrades by the small but energetic community that regularly convened, against the powers that be, to speak publicly on the rights of Palestinians. In hearing and reading Finkelstein, though, I knew the differences in tone and content between us. And yet we shared a history of sorts, not only being linked together and often mistaken for one another, but being pursued by parts of the Jewish establishment that seek to silence criticism of Israel. We also shared the distinctive quality, fairly new in Jewish life, of being dismissed and condemned by leaders of the Jewish community without being heard or read.

So I approached him after his talk and told him who I was and how much I appreciated his work. He returned the compliment, adding quickly that I might not want to be associated with him after his new book appeared. When I asked him the subject of the book, he responded somewhat demurely that it was a book about the Holocaust industry. Though I had never used that term, I had heard it before in other contexts, and that very day in Finkelstein's lecture. Whether an industry or not, Finkelstein had certainly confronted the Holocaust as an interpretative framework and in a controversial way. Just two years earlier, he and co-author Ruth Bettina Birn published a book that directly confronted the controversial theories of Daniel Goldhagen on the "eliminationist" anti-Semitism of the German people during the Nazi era. Goldhagen threatened to sue the authors for libel in the United Kingdom, and yet their book carried the endorsement of noted scholars of the Holocaust, among them Ian Kershaw, Christopher Browning and Raul Hilberg.

I had almost forgotten my conversation with Finkelstein when upon arrival in London in July I was greeted with the television announcement that in the next hour he would be interviewed about his newly released book, which carried the title The Holocaust Industry and an equally provocative sub-title, Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering. I was braced for the interview and wondered in a forbidding way if Finkelstein was going to question the actual number of the dead in the Holocaust or even the particulars of the Nazi death camps. As it turns out, the interview was at the end of the television show and cut short because other segments had run over time. Only three questions were asked and they pertained to the recent litigation regarding compensation for Jewish survivors of the Nazi concentration and death camps. Finkelstein answered the questions in the tone that I was familiar with in his oral presentations: firm, without rhetorical flourish and with a flatness that was in turns direct and elliptical. In his presentations Finkelstein sometimes seemed like a lawyer on direct questioning; at other times he seemed lost in a circularity that was difficult to penetrate. It was the same in this short interview.

The news of Finkelstein's book followed me through my stay in London, as I was leaving shortly for a conference on the Holocaust at Oxford University. Titled, "Remembering for the Future 2000: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide", this was the third conference in a series inaugurated by the late Robert Maxwell and continued after his death by his wife, Elisabeth Maxwell. I was a veteran of these conferences, having attended the 1988 Oxford and 1994 Berlin venues, and now what perhaps would be the final conference. In some ways, these conferences typified criticisms that Finkelstein and others had of the study and use of the Holocaust, as Jewish scholars dwelled on past Jewish suffering, using the Holocaust to shield the Jewish community of the present from accountability.

As an invitee to deliver papers on these occasions, I experienced an openness to my presence that I did not take for granted, and I did speak on each occasion of the interrelationship among the Holocaust, Israel and Palestinians. But for the most part I was alone, and even at this late date I was one of the few, if not the only one, to mention Palestinians, let alone assert, as I did, the centrality of their plight to the future of Jewish life. After all, wasn't the theme of these gatherings remembering for the future? Could a Jewish future be fashioned with integrity and ethics if we did not confess our sins against the Palestinian people? Would the Holocaust, in its enormity, serve as a warning to the future if the heirs of the Holocaust themselves did not take heed of those lessons and apply them to themselves?

In his book, Finkelstein makes a distinction between the "Nazi holocaust", that is, the actual violence and mass murder perpetrated by the Nazis, and the interpretation of that event, which he labels "The Holocaust". Of the event itself, Finkelstein writes little; the horror experienced by his parents and extended family, most of whom were murdered, was rarely spoken of at home or in the surrounding culture within which he was raised. The silence about the Holocaust in the 1950s and 1960s was resounding. According to Finkelstein, it was prompted both by a self-satisfied and hypocritical American ethos engaged with the new Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union, and an assimilationist Jewish establishment that wanted nothing more than to ensure Jewish success in America. At that time, success meant joining in defence of the American dream against communism and the Soviet empire; emphasising victimisation and a former enemy, post-war Germany, at least the Western sector, now on the front lines of democracy, would be seen as un-American.

It wasn't until the 1967 Israeli-Arab war that Finkelstein's The Holocaust began, as a series of interpretations of Jewish suffering that emphasised Jewish distinctiveness in horror and survival. The Jewish establishment, including leaders of major Jewish organisations, rabbis, businessmen and intellectuals in the universities and the media, all of whom once counselled silence on the Nazis' mass murder, now forced public acknowledgement of the Nazi period. In Finkelstein's understanding, the Jewish establishment saw that Israel's victory stood in the West as a beacon of hope for an America beleaguered in Vietnam, and thus could be used again as a way of mainstreaming Jewish life in America. And more: Finkelstein sees both the silencing and the articulation of mass murder as different strategies in different time periods to promote Jewish economic and political ascendancy. The same strategies were applied to Israel. Before the 1967 war, Israel was seen by the American Jewish establishment as divisive and promoting an untenable charge of dual loyalty. Thus, with some exceptions, Israel was downplayed, as was the Nazi era, until Israel, too, became a vehicle for Jewish empowerment in America. Thus, the twinning of the Holocaust and Israel in Jewish life and thought, accepted as so defining of Jewish identity today, was neither natural nor actual until both became useful to the American Jewish establishment.

Finkelstein charts the continuing development since 1967 of an entire political, economic and intellectual apparatus, in his understanding an industry, to promote The Holocaust-and thus Israel as well-as essential to Jewish, Western and American identity. Though couched in moral terms as reparations for historic anti-Jewishness and support of an innocent, beleaguered Israel, the Holocaust industry is really an elaborate cover for promoting Jewish class interests, often over against other suffering communities in the United States and abroad. Finkelstein wonders about the establishment of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, a tribute to Jewish suffering in Europe at the power centre of American life, when the Native American and African American communities who suffered genocide and slavery in America lack such a high-profile museum. The end result is that the Nazi holocaust is trivialised. Finkelstein asserts that, contrary to popular opinion, the silence imposed on the actual survivors in his childhood was better than the trumpeted speech about the event that today is treated so reverentially. The Holocaust industry is the ultimate profanation of the victims of the Nazi holocaust, and the silence about Israeli policies towards the Palestinians which the industry enforces on Jewish dissidents is part of this profanation. Sacralising the Nazi holocaust and declaring it off limits to rational investigation, at the same time limiting its lessons for the future by declaring The Holocaust to be the exclusive province of the Jewish community, is, for Finkelstein, a form of idolatry.

As with all idolatry, financial and political power is evident. Finkelstein traces the ascendancy of Holocaust consciousness over the last decades as a way of mainstreaming and empowering Jewish class interests but also, and this is increasing today, as a financial club against European governments. Reparations for Nazi victims have always been controversial in the Jewish community, and the long-standing German commitment to reparations to the victims themselves and to Israel in particular is well known. Initially, the discussion in the Jewish community was about the acceptance of "blood" money; by the early 1960s that discussion was decided in the affirmative. But in the 1990s, the demand for compensation surfaced again with a new assertiveness and with new political allies, including the crass and anti-minority US senator from New York, Alfonse D'Amato. Thus Switzerland, Sweden and Germany were charged again with complicity in the Nazi plunder of Jews and with benefiting financially from this, from slave labour and from the bank transactions of victims that have been buried for years in secrecy and stealth accounting. The result was the mobilisation of American public opinion, government and financial institutions to demand an accounting and payback, ostensibly for survivors in their last years of life, but in Finkelstein's understanding, as a way of enriching Jewish institutions and elite individuals, including lawyers and intellectuals.

Finkelstein is not shy about his claims and deliberately uses provocative language to demonstrate his points. His three chapters carry the following headings: "Capitalizing The Holocaust"; "Hoaxers, Hucksters, and History"; "The Double Shakedown". Nor is he shy about naming personalities and belittling them. Elie Wiesel is his most prominent target. Finkelstein accuses him of being an economically driven, politically naive charlatan, a pathetic character whose literary abilities are few and whose travel on Concorde and $25,000 fees for speaking on the Holocaust are symbolic of the public trivialisation of the Nazi holocaust and, on a personal level, a degrading of the harrowing experience of Finkelstein's parents.

Wiesel was present at the Oxford conference, as he was in 1988. Rumours were that he had indeed flown in on Concorde for the day. Despite the transportation, Wiesel looked tired, and as the introductory speakers made their remarks he appeared distracted. I even wondered if he was bored by the trappings, the splendid town hall, the renowned Holocaust historians and intellectuals in attendance and yet another audience straining to see the icon of Holocaust literature. Had the success of his own witness paradoxically diminished its meaning? Was he still the same person who, after he emerged from Auschwitz, had written the haunting autobiographical memoir Night?

Now in his seventies, Wiesel was clearly under assault and even some of the participants at the conference, while in no way agreeing with Finkelstein, even vehemently opposing his views, questioned Wiesel's relevance. For the short presentation he made emphasised the assault on Holocaust memory, as if the memory itself was fading; and alluding directly to but without naming Finkelstein, he deplored those who criticised him and "hated" Israel. As for the money he made giving lectures and teaching, Wiesel asserted that he had never made money speaking on the Holocaust, a subject he has spoken on only rarely. If he was paid, the money was given to charity. As he spoke these words I couldn't help but wonder if Wiesel was deliberately covering up the issue of his own wealth or was incredibly naive. Whether directly speaking about the Holocaust or not, did he think his lectures and writings on other subjects-the Bible, Talmud and Jewish mysticism-were of interest to the broader public except in his capacity as the quintessential survivor of and spokesman for the Holocaust?

Wiesel's presence was shadowed by Finkelstein's book and the publicity surrounding it in the United Kingdom. Was the "Remembering for the Future" conference part of the Holocaust industry? Were all those in attendance, including myself, part of this industry? If this was an industry, trivialising the memory of the dead even as we invoked their memory, had it always been so? Had the best of intentions been co-opted, and had the leading figures of this industry, once subversive and shunned by the Jewish establishment, become the establishment they once fought? Had they lost their souls in the process? Finkelstein's prophetic views and outrageous rhetoric came together in a package. Did they tell the whole story, condemning The Holocaust as it has come to be revered? Or can there be a deeper meaning to his words, a meaning that seeks the essence of remembrance without shielding injustice and idolatry?

If the Holocaust is indeed an industry, it was not always the case. In fact, my own experience of learning of the Holocaust and entering its terrain at a deep level was occasioned by my study with one of the founders of Holocaust theology, Richard Rubenstein. He, too, was at the conference and spoke as well. Now in his mid-seventies, Rubenstein was an accepted member of the Holocaust establishment. But I recall my years with him in the early 1970s when his groundbreaking book, After Auschwitz, published in 1966, and his open discussion of the Holocaust, were fought bitterly by the Jewish establishment and by Wiesel himself. The Jewish establishment didn't want anything to do with the Holocaust, and Wiesel vehemently disagreed with Rubenstein's critical assessment of Jewish leadership during the Nazi era and his understanding that the God of history could no longer be affirmed.

Living through the early years of Holocaust interpretation alerted me to the cost of speaking about the Holocaust: Rubenstein was exiled to Tallahassee, Florida, where Jewish presence and pressure were minimal, and despite the bitter and mutual recrimination between Rubenstein and Wiesel, Wiesel himself had a difficult time receiving a hearing in the 1950s and early 1960s. If they both helped give birth to and have benefited from the Holocaust industry, their early reception gave little hint of this expansive future. When Wiesel and Rubenstein began, the odds were against their flourishing rather than in favour of it, and when I studied with Rubenstein, it was long before courses on the Holocaust were offered and chairs in Holocaust Studies became the most prestigious and well-paid academic positions on campuses in the United States. They also wrote before the question of Israel became linked with the Holocaust, before Israel was celebrated, and before the problematic of Israel had become obvious to many.

Reading Finkelstein cautions Jews and others to be careful with memory. In certain contexts, memory can be subversive; in others, memory can shield the status quo. When individuals and communities become vested with memory as a form of identity and specialness, then other suffering threatens to displace the centrality of our experience. Instead of a bridge of solidarity to others who are suffering in the present, suffering in the past can become a badge of honour, protecting us from the challenges that are before us. Then our witness, originally powerful, opening questions about God and power, becomes diluted, can be seen as fake, contrived, even wilfully so. An industry grows up around you, honours you, and at the same time uses your witness for other reasons. In the end a confusion results, externally and internally, until the witness himself can no longer differentiate between the world of interpretation he helped articulate and the world that now speaks in his name. Is this what happened to Wiesel, or is Finkelstein's more acerbic analysis accurate?

Clearly, one can only feel ambivalent about the discussion and teaching of the Holocaust as we enter the twenty-first century. To have the Holocaust part of Jewish success, to have the victims of the Holocaust become part of Jewish empowerment, is unsettling. To speak of the Holocaust without confessing our sins towards the Palestinian people and seeking a real justice with them is a hypocrisy that debases us as Jews. Surely, the ultimate trivialisation is the use of memory to oppress others and this, rather than the "industry", is responsible for the difficulties facing those who seek to communicate the historic suffering of European Jews.



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