Holocaust Industry

HAARETZ

Jerusalem & Babylon / America's giant Holocaust claims fraud - more than just a blip?
The scam that defrauded the conference of $43 million earmarked for Holocaust survivors was not just a matter of a few bad apples.

By Anshel Pfeffer | Nov.12, 2010 | 2:44 AM | 57

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You could almost say it was a crime without victims. Sure, $43 million were stolen over the last 16 years through false claims submitted to two funds run by the Claims Conference, the main organization that administers reparations to Jewish Holocaust survivors. And granted, six present and former employees of the organization were at the center of the scam, including the man in charge of overseeing both funds.

But hey, according to Greg Schneider, executive vice president of the Claims Conference, "it's less than one percent of funds distributed under those programs" and no authentic Holocaust survivor received less because of the scam. Well, that's okay then.

And of course, no one is saying this on the record, but most of the money came from the German taxpayer. So don't expect any official recriminations from that quarter.

The Manhattan district attorney was full of praise for the Claims Conference's cooperation in the investigation, saying without its help "in ferreting out this alleged scheme to defraud them, it never would have been exposed." So now the conference will hire an international consulting firm to help it strengthen its anti-fraud measures and everything will be fine. We should have no worries about allowing the conference to remain the Jewish people's sole custodian not only of official reparations from the German government, but also of property confiscated from Jews by the Nazis in former East Germany and other countries, and recently for stolen art treasures as well.

But just a moment. Six employees may seem a small number in a large multinational company or a government agency, but less than 100 people work at the Claims Conference's headquarters in New York, where all the suspects were employed. So even assuming that no other employee was tainted by the corruption, this was not just a matter of a couple of rotten apples; it was a sizable group operating within the organization for 16 years. Sixteen years!

And it doesn't even seem like the fraud was that elaborate. Indeed, it was almost wholesale - 4,957 false one-time payments and 658 fake pension claims.

The conference claims in its defense that this is but a drop in the ocean when compared to the number of recipients to whom it has made payments over the years, over 600,000. But if 5,615 claims were so easily fabricated, who knows how many other thousands of fake Holocaust survivors have been collecting payments over the years? I can't even bear to check the Holocaust denial websites to see how they must be crowing right now.

It would be easy to simply blame the conference for incompetence. But that is only a small part of the problem. The organization has no lack of impressive professionals. For example, Reuven Merhav, the chairman of its executive committee, is a former senior Mossad official, ambassador and director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, whose investigative skills were at least sufficient to make him a member of the Turkel Committee that is now investigating May's botched raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla. (Justice Jacob Turkel, the eponymous committee's head, is another Claims Conference director. )

No, the real problem at the Claims Conference seems to have been complacency. From various hints and off-the-record remarks to the press, you get the impression that conference leaders are trying to blame Russian organized crime. Apparently all those indicted had links to the group in Brooklyn's Brighton Beach that ran the operation.

That may well be true. But how does that exonerate the senior executives who allowed members of this gang to serve in positions where they authorized hundreds of millions of dollars a year in payments? Were there no serious background checks?

The conference is nominally accountable to a board of directors representing 25 Jewish organizations from around the world, some of them large and influential, others archaic and unrepresentative of any real Jewish constituency. But what interest do any of these directors have in demanding a comprehensive overhaul of how the conference does business or appointing an external committee to review this latest scandal?

In addition to the money going to survivors, the conference distributes tens of millions of dollars annually to a long list of organizations loosely involved in Holocaust commemoration and education. Many of these institutions are subsidiaries of the organizations represented on Claims Conference board of directors. They are not interested in altering this cozy arrangement, despite claims by survivors' groups that in the final years of survivors' lives, every spare cent should be going to their welfare.

One former director did dare to break ranks: Zeev Bielski, the previous Jewish Agency chairman, demanded answers to some uncomfortable questions. When he did not receive them, he launched an independent audit of his own, revealing to the press that the conference had over $1 billion of liquid assets in reserve.

He also argued that Israel, as home to the majority of living survivors, should have more of a say in how the New York-based organization allocates funds. This, of course, was a grave breach of protocol, and the cash-strapped agency was punished: Funds for its projects were withheld. Bielski was forced to back down with a groveling apology. Others learned the lesson.

The Claims Conference is the richest, most powerful and least answerable old-boys network in the Jewish world Yet it is entrusted not only with billions of dollars, but with a duty to the welfare of Holocaust survivors worldwide until the end of their days. And no amount of scandal, media exposes and political pressure is about to change that.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/jerusalem-babylon-america-s-giant-holocaust-claims-fraud-more-than-just-a-blip-1.324242

Norman Finkelstein on The Holocaust Industry

The BBC wrote on their website:

Jewish American historian Norman Finkelstein argues in his explosive new book, "The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering" that Holocaust remembrance has been exploited by the Jewish establishment.

In his book he contends that a greater threat to the memory of the Holocaust than Holocaust deniers is what he calls 'The Holocaust Industry'.

He accuses those who exploit the Holocaust of telling lies and of naked greed. He argues that the ruthless industrialisation of the Holocaust has encouraged the rebirth of anti-semitism in Europe and the United States.

The son of survivors of the Warsaw ghetto and concentration camps, he says, "I do care about the memory of my family's persecution. The current campaign of the Holocaust industry to extort money from Europe in the name of "needy Holocaust victims" has shrunk the moral stature of their martyrdom to that of a Monte Carlo casino.....

....But Finkelstein makes clear that the Holocaust Industry is not about making sure that Nazi depravity is not forgotten — it is about extorting huge sums of money from Switzerland, Germany and any other country which can be tarred with the Nazi brush.

Modern-day Germany has already atoned for the sins of the Nazi era, both morally and financially. Many times since the war (and even today) Germany's leaders have expressed their profound regret at the actions of the Nazis, and have accepted collective responsibility for what happened. As Finkelstein says, "In the early 1950s, Germany entered into negotiations with Jewish institutions and signed indemnification agreements. It has paid out to date some $60bn."

Although we may rightly feel contempt for the Germans of the 1920s and 1930s who supported Hitler, most of them are now dead. Germans born after the war (apart from a few young Nazi sympathizers) think very differently. Germany no longer has any reason to abase itself before the denunciation of its Nazi past. Especially not when that denunciation comes from those who appear to be motivated primarily by a desire for money.

serendipity.com

Extracted from The Holocaust Industry by Norman G Finkelstein (Verso, £16)

The business of death

Norman Finkelstein has caused a storm on both sides of the Atlantic and it is not hard to see why: he says the Holocaust has been exploited to extort cash, that most 'survivors' are bogus and that too much money is spent commemorating the Nazi genocide. In the first of two exclusive extracts, he argues that it's time to shut down 'the holocaust industry'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2000/jul/12/1

“Dr. Mengele was holding a list: our numbers. [...] I had but one thought: not to have my number taken down and not to show my left arm .” Elie Wiesel, Night, p. 72




Where is Elie's Tattoo?


Elie Wiesel has told us for over 50 years that he was tattooed at Auschwitz in 1944, and that his tattoo number is A7713. He has repeatedly said that he still has this original tattoo on his arm. Just last March in Dayton, Ohio, Elie met with the press, high school and college students, and 2300 members of the local community. As reported in the Dayton Daily News , one student asked Wiesel if he still has his concentration camp number and if it serves as a reminder of those terrible experiences. "I don’t need that to remember, I think about my past every day," he responded. "But I still have it on my arm – A7713. At that time, we were numbers. No names, no identity."


Wiesel Quotes

“Never shall I forget that first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, ... Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.” Elie Wiesel, Night (original edition)

“Not far from us, flames, huge flames, were rising from a ditch. Something was being burned there. A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children. Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes ... children thrown into the flames.” Elie Wiesel, Night, p. 32

“The thousands of people who died daily in Auschwitz and Birkenau, in the crematoria, no longer troubled me.” Elie Wiesel, Night, p. 62

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Primo Levi, on page 27 of his highly-quoted book Survival in Auschwitz, writes that every prisoner had to have a tattoo. “It seems that this is the real, true initiation: only by showing one's number can one get bread and soup.” Without a tattoo, how did Wiesel survive?

meh

the whole thing is just so demented.
reckon i'll just watch it all unravel on its own.

Reconstructed chimney is not connected to the ovens

The photo above shows the brick chimney that was reconstructed in 1947. Note that it is completely detached from the building and it is not connected to the reconstructed crematory ovens. The original chimney was round, according to Filip Müller, a prisoner who worked in the crematorium, but it had to be replaced and the new chimney was square shaped. Other witnesses say that the original chimney was square.

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The Lies, Slips, Bungles and Perjuries of Filip Mueller, Professional Witness of Auschwitz-Birkenau

by Maria Temmer

http://www.whale.to/b/temmer.html

DW has learned that Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s national railway, has hired two US firms to lobby on Holocaust legislation. The reason: Two bills before Congress would allow Holocaust victims to file suits in the US.

According to documents filed with US authorities and reviewed by DW, Deutsche Bahn late last year hired a strategic communications group and a law firm to advise and represent the company in its dealings with members of Congress and US government agencies.

Deutsche Bahn’s lobbying efforts are related to the Holocaust Rail Justice Act which was introduced in the US Senate and the House of Representatives on March 17, 2011. The bills have prominent support: Senator Charles Schumer of New York sponsored the Senate version; co-sponsors include Senate majority leader Harry Reid and former vice presidential nominee Joe Lieberman.

Law applicable to SNCF alone

The goal of the two identical bills, which specifically mention France’s national railway SNCF, is to enable Holocaust victims to file suits regarding the deportation by trains to Nazi concentration camps before US courts.

Previous lawsuits by Holocaust victims in the US against SNCF failed because American courts don’t have jurisdiction over SNCF due to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). The FSIA limits suits in American courts against other countries or entities belonging to governments of other nations. The Holocaust Rail Justice Act would strip the company of this protection.

http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,15838460,00.html?maca=en-aa-news-862-rdf