* Delicious things are happening in Britain where, to the horror of the Holocaust Enforcers, Norman Finkelstein's book "The Holocaust Industry" is the talk of the town.
The author is due to fly in for a speaking engagement tomorrow - where, according to the Guardian, he will land smack in the middle of a "major storm."
Wiesel is there; Lipstadt is there; Finkelstein is coming. . . can it get any better? I quote briefly from the Guardian Weekly, hot off the press:
"Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, the Nobel-prize winning author whose book Night is held as one of the most important of Holocaust texts, is one of the major speakers at the Remembering for the Future conference. So is Finkelstein, who says Wiesel is a hypocrite, responsible for the 'sacralisation of the Holocaust ... for his standard fee of $25,000 (plus chauffeured limousine)'. (...)
"(Finkelstein's) incendiary book, published in the US last Thursday and here this week, argues that interest in the Holocaust arose after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war not because survivors found a voice but because an all-powerful American Jewish lobby realised it could now be used to lend a kind of moral victimhood to an Israeli state engaged in criminal acts against the Palestinians. Further, he says efforts have been made to stress the 'uniqueness' of the genocide of the Jews, not for any moral reason, but simply to protect its power as a symbol.
"Most recently, (Finkelstein) says, it has been used to extort money from Germany, Switzerland and others in the name of Holocaust survivors who do not need it, the funds staying with Jewish institutions and not those very few living survivors who might need it. He adds the number of Holocaust survivors has been grossly inflated, and that there are now more survivors than at the end of the war.
"'The current campaign of the Holocaust industry to extort money from Europe in the name of "needy Holocaust victims" has,' (Finkelstein) writes, 'shrunk the moral stature of their martyrdom to that of a Monte Carlo casino.'"
* And speaking of Britain: A Britain-based bus driver who claimed he was tormented by "goose-stepping" colleagues who called him "Herman the German" lost his claim for Race discrimination when a tribunal dismissed the offences as "good-natured banter".
The bus driver explained: "Unfortunately these jokes included Nazi remarks, which, like many Germans, I find offensive. They would include phrases such as Sieg Heil, Heil Mein Führer and German bastard. I was also referred to as 'Herman the German' and 'Gerhard'." One of his co-workers even remarked that he was ". . . surprised to meet a German without a gas supply, clearly implying a connection with the Nazi wartime gas chambers."
* Some Revisionists are eyeing certain lobbies for potential lawsuits for "mental manipulation of Western civilization" modeled on a proposed French law that will threaten missionaries and laypersons who share their faith in Jesus and could be imprisoned for up to two years.
French Justice Minister Elisabeth Guigou called the proposed bill "a significant advance giving a democratic state the legal tool to efficiently fight groups abusing its core values."
* Eager beavers were fishing for "Nazi secrets" in an Austrian lake, hoping for incriminating documents and gold - but called off the search prematurely when it was discovered that Lake Toplitzsee in central Austria surrendered a lead box that contained nothing but old beer bottle caps.
"We think it had been planted there as a hoax for divers from an expedition in the 1980s to find," lakefront resturant owner Albrecht Syen, who assisted in organizing the search effort, told reporters. The World Jewish Congress helped finance the expedition.
* A Polish camp commander, only identified as Czeslaw G., has been charged by Polish prosecutors for murdering 48 German prisoners. The camp held Silesian Germans and other Silesians considered suspect by Poland. The charges were filed after a two-year investigation.
Solomon Morel, another self-confessed mass murderer, who has squirreled himself away in Israel and who has admitted to thousands of such murders, might now feel some heat under his collar.
* Israeli media reports that a US-based website, believed to belong to Jewish extremist, shows "Barak's face on Hitler's body, in Nazi uniform, unfurling a Palestinian flag, and saying, 'I will finish your work, Mein Fuerher. (sic) I will join Hamas and the PLO to finish the job [of destroying the Jewish people]."
Observation: The same kind of photomontage, showing Rabin's head on an SS soldier's body, appeared only a few days before Rabin was assassinated. . .
* German churches are now being targeted by Holocaust Enforcers. The Evangelical Church in Germany pledged $5 million to the already swelling compensation fund recently established by government and industry.
"We recognize this guilt,'' a church statement said.
For what? Forced laborers were being used for such things as cemetery upkeep and forest maintenance.
The repentant Evangelical Church in Germany includes 24 Lutheran, Reformed and United regional churches. The Catholic Church, meanwhile, is still digging in its heels.
* Some European countries are getting tired of snubbing Austria because Joerg Haider, a political maverick, had some mildly nostalgic things to say about Hitler.
France decided to invite Austria's ambassador to Paris to help celebrate Bastille Day, and Belgium is soon to follow suit with one of its festivities.
* In Greece, Holocaust-related controversy is heating up as well. The move against the Goethe Institut, a cultural institute, targeted for seizure by Holocaust aficionados, ". . . could herald a showdown between the Greek courts and the government, which has said that it will not allow any seizure of German government property," according to several reports.
Police were called out to clear the way for the bailiffs after Goethe Institut employees attempted to block their entry.
* Steven "Schindler's List" Spielberg has lined up four additional film projects about the Holocaust, this time with the help of Eastern European directors.
Roman Polanski, another Jewish director, plans to start shooting a Warsaw Ghetto film.
* John Demjanjuk, who languished for years in an Israeli prison, thanks to the O.S.I.'s withholding vital evidence in his US proceedings, and who was even sentenced to be hanged as "Ivan the Terrible" in Israel and then cleared because of mistaken identity, lost an important legal battle.
A U.S. federal judge dismissed his lawsuit that claimed the probe into allegations that he was a war criminal amounted to torture. U.S. District Court Judge Paul Matia ruled this week that the government has sovereign immunity and cannot be sued.
Patriots will say that is a telling ruling - just like the Waco judgement!
* The World Jewish Congress announced that Spain will likewise contribute $1.5 million to a Holocaust Survivor fund.
Spain's decision to contribute to the fund reflected its sense of responsibility for its role in the Second World War, because Spain provided the Nazis with tungsten used in armor-piercing shells, the WJC said.
Elan Steinberg, WJC executive director, had good things to say about Spain. "They (Spain) were absolutely objective and identified the moral issue here. This is not a question of whether it was legal or not. It is a shining example to other countries,'' he said.
Our comment: An itsy bitsy piece of good press - at the price of a hefty $1.5 million?
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Thought for the Day:
"There is a sort of industry going on around the Holocaust which grows on itself. Elie Wiesel does charge a fortune and do(es) the wide, sad eyes thing. But because Finkelstein does it as a rant, the validity of those points gets lost.'"
(Rabbi Julia Neuberger, commenting on the Finkelstein controversy)
Back to Table of Contents of the July 2000 ZGrams