This one is short but sweet. It came from the H-NET List for "History of the Holocaust." The author is Normal Finkelstein who took on Jonah Goldhagen for his horrendous smear job on the entire German people.
As a result, Norman Finkelstein has caught the wrath of the Holocaustomaniacs, and for a while there I thought they had scared him off and forced him into silence. Apparently not so.
In this post he comments on the Wilkomirski matter.
Wilkomirski is the shady author who wrote yet one more highly successful Auschwitz book, claiming he experienced Auschwitz as a bona fide survivor babe - a claim that turned out to be another Hoaxeria.
Here is Mr. (Dr.?) Finkelstein's delectable post of July 8, 1999:
I do not wish to enter into a protracted debate on the matter of who is a survivor. It seems that most listmembers . . . grasped my point. However, I would want to suggest where this latest Nazi holocaust revisionism is heading. Some of you may have read the GRANTA article on Wilkomirski. The most astonishing commentary came from Israel Gutman, a director of Yad Vashem. Allow me to quote the crucial passage:
" [Wilkomirski's story] has to be checked very thoroughly, but -- I don't think it's that important. Wilkomirski has written a story which he has experienced deeply, that's for sure. So that, even if he is not Jewish, the fact that he was so deeply affected by the Holocaust is of huge importance...He is not a fake. He is someone who lives this story very deeply in his soul. The pain is authentic."
Thus: Because Wilkomirski's pain is real, he is an authentic survivor. Never mind that he spent the war not in Auschwitz but in the most affluent quarter of Switzerland. Never mind that he is half-fruitcake, half-mountebank.
Let me add that I know for sure that Gutman was in Auschwitz. My late father met him there and they became lifelong friends. And yet Gutman now avers that it makes no difference whether you were in Auschwitz or a Swiss finishing school: it's all the same if "the pain is authentic"!
Isn't it time for serious reflection on how morally corrupting this whole Holocaust business has become?
For that reason alone, I welcome Novick's book.
Sincerely,
Norman Finkelstein
Thought for the Day:
"Have you heard of the wonderful
one-hoss shay
That was built in
such a logical way,
That it ran a hundred years
to a day?
End of the wonderful
one-hoss shay!
Logic is logic - that's all
I can say!"
(Oliver Wendell Holmes)
Back to Table of Contents of the Oct. 1999 ZGrams