Norman Finkelstein Debates Who Counts as a Holocaust Survivor

I wanna ask you a question.

Sure.

You wrote a book called The Ho- you wrote a book called The Holocaust

Industry.

Mm-hmm.

And in this book, you claim, and this is

also I, I saw a recent interview that you did

with Candace Owens and where it was repeated. You claim a couple things.

You claim that there were only 100,000 survivors-

No, under 100,000, yeah

... from the show, from the Holocaust.

You also, you a- you also claim that people have used the

Holocaust and have exploited the Holocaust.

Mm.

Can you tell me what that means?

Well, number one,

I, it's not my figure. The figure of under

100,000 Holocaust survivors comes from Henry

Friedlander and Raul Hilberg.

Now, where did we get that figure?

A Holocaust survivor when I was growing up,

a Holocaust survivor meant the following.

You survived the ghettos,

the conc- the death camps, or the labor camps,

and usually it was all three by coincidence.

So for example, my mother and father were in the Warsaw Ghetto.

After the uprising, they were deported and were gone to concentration camp.

My father then ended up in Auschwitz, uh, where he was in the

work side of the, uh, Auschwitz.

My mother ended up in two pla- labor camps.

That's what a Holocaust survivor meant.

If you were, for example, in the Soviet Union during World War II,

you

fled, you know, when the, uh, um, oh-

As many did

... yeah, yes-

Yes

... about 250,000, then you were considered to

have escaped the Holocaust.

That was an escape from the Holocaust.

None of my parents' friends would have ever dared say to

them

that they had endured what my parents endured

during World War II. That was unthinkable, and that's

how a Holocaust survivor was defined.

Now, when the whole-

I'm just-

When the whole issue-

Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry

... of Holocaust reparations came up, everybody suddenly discovered

they were a Holocaust survivor, but that's not what the Holocaust survivor

meant to m- the generation right after.

And then that, I've got-

So you don't, you, you don't believe that, you don't believe that somebody who had

to flee-

That's right

... in the opposite direction-

That's right

... and, and you don't believe that that person who had to abandon his

home and had to flee, whose parents or family-

Right

... were murdered,

that they are Holocaust survivors?

Absolutely not, and as I said, nobody would...

All of my parents' circle of friends after World War II,

because they never really assimilated to American life,

all of their friends had survived, had come out of

World War II either, one, Lanya, she lived with

a Christian family, obviously paid, the found- their families paid, but they

lived with a Christian family. And then I can name Ginsburg,

Horowitz, this, that. They were all in Russia during the war.

They never called themselves Holocaust survivors.

That never even came up. You see-

So-

... you have no idea what you're talking about

... multiple sources, multiple sources, including Yad Vashem-

Oh, stop with Yad-

... who pen the Holocaust-

Yad Vashem is a, a source like the St- uh, the,

uh, Institute for r- St- Soviet Studies under Stalin.

It's just a political institution.

There's no scholarly value.

And some would say, and some would say your statements

are offensive-

Oh, that's true

... and some would say that it's a manipu-

Yeah

... uh, it's a manipulation of truth.

You know, you know what's offensive? I'll tell you.

It's offensive to say the h- the, the, uh,

Nazi murder machine was very efficient.

It was an assembly-like, factory-like, assembly

line-like, factory-like extermination of the Jews,

and

it's like my mo- late mother used to say, "If everybody who claims to be a

Holocaust survivor is one, then who did Hitler kill?" You didn't

survive it. On my mother's side, every single member of her family

was exterminated except her. On my father's side, every single member

of his family was exterminated except him.

But now, if you walk the streets of New York, well,

not anymore, 'cause it's 80

years ago, but there was a period during the 1980s and '90s

everyone claimed to be a Holocaust survivor. That's offensive.

That's deeply offensive. You know what that is?

Brace yourself. That is

Holocaust denial.

When you inflate the numbers of survivors to

the point of absurdity, that's

Holocaust denial. I am the Holocaust

affirmer. You and your Yad Vashem are the

Holocaust deniers.