Wizard McMagic’s Reviews > The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering > Status Update

Demonstration of the widening definition of who is a holocaust survivor and the use of that definition to obtain and misappropriate funds for pet projects all while ignoring many Jewish folk who actually did experience and survive the final solution.

"Kagan rings up in 12 days, Eagleburger in 4 days, and D'Amato in 10 hours what my mother received from suffering six years of Nazi persecution."

Concluding the chapter, it contains a lot of scathing critique of prominently lauded authors of holocaust literature, as well as showcasing the sorts of mechanisms of pushback that are deployed against scholarly critique of their works (Finkelstein explains an instance where this happens to himself). Double standards in how this rhetoric is deployed to comparable events display its ideological utility.

Good chapter!

Much discussion about the state of Holocaust literature, including the numerous fabrications of survivor’s stories from people who wanted notoriety (Binjamin Wilkomirski’s Fragments is used as a notable example).

“True, Wilkomirski fabricated his Holocaust past, but the larger truth is that the Holocaust industry… …was primed to celebrate the Wilkomirski fabrication.”

Decided to peek just a bit further into the next chapter. It's laying the groundwork for tackling the arguments regarding the claim of the uniqueness of the Nazi holocaust.

Finished the first chapter, where Finkelstein is laying out an observation about the cultural importance of holocaust remembrance within America both before the 1967 war and after it, drawing the conclusion that The Holocaust (Big H, defined by the book as an ideological instrument that refers the the historical event of the Nazi holocaust) was typically only employed if it suited American foreign policy interests.

I decided to pick this back up because I was annoyed seeing it unfinished while reading the other book, and wanted to alternate reading books whenever How To Read Donald Duck bounced me off it (Its concepts can be sorta esoterically written...)