In his iconoclastic and controversial study Norman G. Finkelstein moves from an interrogation
of the place the Holocaust has come to occupy in global culture to a disturbing examination of
Holocaust compensation settlements. 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 has today. Recalling Holocaust
fraudsters such as Jerzy Kosinski and Binjamin Wilkomirski as well as the demagogic
constructions of writers like Daniel Goldhagen Finkelstein contends that the main danger posed
to the memory of Nazism’s victims comes from some of the very people who profess most
passionately to defend it. Drawing on a wealth of untapped sources he exposes the double
shakedown of European countries and legitimate Jewish claimants and concludes that the
Holocaust industry has become an outright extortion racket
