Studies into the Accuracy of Holocaust Accounts

[Penn44]

Has a sympathetic writer done any research on the issue of inaccuracies in Holocaust accounts/testimony? Of what I have seen of Holocaust literature, I think Finklestein comes closest to date (not just his criticism of the "Holocaust industry," but also some individual accounts).

Given that tremendous trauma and physiological deprivation (starvation, malnutrition, dehydration, sleep deprivation) can cause problems in thinking, perception, memory, etc., one could suppose that the testimonies of some Holocaust survirvors may be inaccurate in part through admission or exaggeration.

Given the sensitivities regarding the issue of Holocaust and the ever constant threat of Holocaust deniers, will the Holocaust community ever be open to a more critical appraisal of individual Holocaust accounts?

It seems by and large that Holocaust historians generally accept individual Holocaust accounts at face value.

[Wulpe]

A Finkelstein excerpt (published in The Guardian July 12, 2000):

The term "Holocaust survivor" originally designated those who suffered the unique trauma of the Jewish ghettos, concentration camps and slave labour camps, often in sequence. The figure for these Holocaust survivors at war's end is generally put at some 100,000. The number of living survivors cannot be more than a quarter of this figure now. Because enduring the camps became a crown of martyrdom, many Jews who spent the war elsewhere represented themselves as camp survivors. Another strong motive behind this misrepresentation, however, was material. The postwar German government provided compensation to Jews who had been in ghettos or camps. Many Jews fabricated their pasts to meet this eligibility requirement. "If everyone who claims to be a survivor actually is one," my mother used to exclaim, "who did Hitler kill?"

Even within the Holocaust industry, Deborah Lipstadt, for example, wryly observes that Holocaust survivors frequently maintain they were personally examined by Josef Mengele at Auschwitz. Because survivors are now revered as secular saints, one doesn't dare question them. Preposterous statements pass without comment. Elie Wiesel reminisces in his acclaimed memoir that, recently liberated from Buchenwald and only 18 years old, "I read the Critique of Pure Reason - don't laugh! - in Yiddish." Leaving aside Wiesel's acknowledgment that at the time "I was wholly ignorant of Yiddish grammar," The Critique of Pure Reason was never translated into Yiddish. "The truth I present is unvarnished," Wiesel sighs, "I cannot do otherwise."

In recent years, "Holocaust survivor" has been redefined to designate not only those who endured but also those who managed to evade the Nazis. One contributor to a Holocaust website maintained that, although he spent the war in Tel Aviv, he was a Holocaust survivor because his grandmother died in Auschwitz. According to Israel Gutman, a former inmate of Auschwitz, director of Yad Vashem and a Holocaust lecturer at Hebrew University, "it's not that important" whether Binjamin Wilkomirski's [now discredited "autobiographical" account of childhood in the camps], Fragments, is a fraud. "Wilkomirski has written a story which he has experienced deeply; that's for sure . . . He is not a fake. He is someone who lives this story very deeply in his soul." So it doesn't matter whether he spent the war in a concentration camp or a Swiss chalet; Wilkomirski is a Holocaust survivor because "his pain is authentic."

The Israeli prime minister's office recently put the number of "living Holocaust survivors" at nearly a million. The main motive behind this inflationary revision is again not hard to find. It is difficult to press massive new claims for reparations if only a handful of Holocaust survivors are still alive.

[Deterance]

Has a sympathetic writer done any research on the issue of inaccuracies in Holocaust accounts/testimony? Of what I have seen of Holocaust literature, I think Finklestein comes closest to date (not just his criticism of the "Holocaust industry," but also some individual accounts).

Wulpe,

Who is Finkelstien and could you post some of his Books? I would be very interested in reading an objective study.

Too many historians accept testimony with out question....even though some eye witnesses have been discreditied. Of course, some "revisionism" is simply a cover for anti semites.

[Wulpe]

Wulpe,

Who is Finkelstien and could you post some of his Books? I would be very interested in reading an objective study.

Norman G. Finkelstein received his doctorate from the Department of Politics, Princeton University, for a thesis on the theory of Zionism. He is the author of four books: Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (Verso, 1995), The Rise and Fall of Palestine (University of Minnesota, 1996), with Ruth Bettina Birn, A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth (Henry Holt,1998) and The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (Verso, 2000). His writings have appeared in prestigous journals such as the London Review of Books, Index on Censorship, Journal of Palestine Studies, New Left Review, Middle East Report, Christian Science Monitor and Al Ahram Weekly. Currently he teaches political science at DePaul University in Chicago.

Norman Finkelstein was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1953. He is the son of Maryla Husyt Finkelstein, survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, Maidanek concentration camp, and Zacharias Finkelstein, survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, Auschwitz concentration camp. He dedicated his first book to his parents in which he wrote: "May I never forgive or forget what was done to them." His brothers Richard and Henry Finkelstein would like all visitors to this web site to know that the surviving family fully supports Norman's efforts to maintain the integrity of the history of the Nazi holocaust. May we never forgive or forget what was done.

You will find a lot of information, this biography, a bibliography, related newspaper articles,... on his webpage.

The most popular book is "The Holocaust Industry".

[David Thompson]

There is no reason to believe that the testimony of holocaust survivors is any more or less reliable than the testimony of those who survived Japanese or Soviet POW camps, combat veterans of the armed forces, persons who were hostages but were released or escaped, eyewitnesses to accidents, disasters, assassinations, etc. If one or another aspect of the testimony is at issue and is also of interest to an historian, he can weigh the truth of it and present his findings to the public.

As far as I know, no one has found "the issue of inaccuracies in Holocaust accounts/testimony" of sufficient interest or public importance to have done a special study. I haven't seen any special studies on the issue of inaccuracies in the accounts/testimony regarding the expulsion of German nationals from eastern European countries in 1945-1947, the issue of inaccuracies in the accounts/testimony regarding the nineteenth century Irish potato famine, the influenza epidemic of 1917-1919, or any of the other issues mentioned above either, for that matter.

[tonyh]

As far as I know, no one has found "the issue of inaccuracies in Holocaust accounts/testimony" of sufficient interest or public importance to have done a special study.

You must be joking David! There would without a doubt be a huge interest in a book of this sort. The fact is that the holo-establishment would round upon the unfortunate author with such malice that his career wouldn't be worth a penny.

Finkelstein's "Holocaust Industry" was almost absent from New York bookstores when I was over there. I had bought the book in Ireland before I went. There was such an uproar from the "Jewish community" (well, the interested parties anyway, like the ADL) that stores like Barnes and Noble were afraid to stock the book in any quantity and thus very hard to locate. Finkelstein himself was labeled a "self-loathing jew" because he dared to go against the holo-establishments view of things and dare to suggest hat these entities make millions every year, while the actual "holocaust survivors" have to make do with a fraction of their coffers.

Also IIRC Finkelstein lost his position at the university he was teaching in due to pressure from certain quarters.

Tony

[David Thompson]

tonyh -- No, I wasn't joking, but I did get a laugh out of the first paragraph of your reply.

[Wulpe]

There is no reason to believe that the testimony of holocaust survivors is any more or less reliable than the testimony of those who survived Japanese or Soviet POW camps, combat veterans of the armed forces, persons who were hostages but were released or escaped, eyewitnesses to accidents, disasters, assassinations, etc. If one or another aspect of the testimony is at issue and is also of interest to an historian, he can weigh the truth of it and present his findings to the public.

Roger

As far as I know, no one has found "the issue of inaccuracies in Holocaust accounts/testimony" of sufficient interest or public importance to have done a special study. I haven't seen any special studies on the issue of inaccuracies in the accounts/testimony regarding the expulsion of German nationals from eastern European countries in 1945-1947, the issue of inaccuracies in the accounts/testimony regarding the nineteenth century Irish potato famine, the influenza epidemic of 1917-1919, or any of the other issues mentioned above either, for that matter.

The german nationals which were ethnically cleansed in the East after WW II didn´t receive a penny. Holocaust survivors do. That´s why it would be of "public interest and importance" for the taxpayers of Switzerland, Austria and Germany to research the accuracy of Holocaust survivor´s testimonies.

[David Thompson]

Wulpe -- You said: "The german nationals which were ethnically cleansed in the East after WW II didn´t receive a penny. Holocaust survivors do. That´s why it would be of "public interest and importance" for the taxpayers of Switzerland, Austria and Germany to research the accuracy of Holocaust survivor´s testimonies."

I'm not quite sure what you're saying here. Are saying that the Swiss, Austrian and German governments should, but don't, check to see if reparations claimants are justly entitled to the money? Or did you have some additional memory test in mind for proven survivors?

[Wulpe]

I'm not quite sure what you're saying here. Are saying that the Swiss, Austrian and German governments should, but don't, check to see if reparations claimants are justly entitled to the money?

I presuppose that the individual claims are checked. I didn´t find numbers on Holocaust reparations, only on the german reconciliation fund for slave labor. 1240 thousand valid claims face 223 thousand rightless claims. (Source)

I think it would be of public interest to go beyond individual stories and let a historian commission examine the whole process.

[Penn44]

There is no reason to believe that the testimony of holocaust survivors is any more or less reliable than the testimony of those who survived Japanese or Soviet POW camps, combat veterans of the armed forces, persons who were hostages but were released or escaped, eyewitnesses to accidents, disasters, assassinations, etc. If one or another aspect of the testimony is at issue and is also of interest to an historian, he can weigh the truth of it and present his findings to the public. .

I disagree. All other factors being equal, the greater intensity of the psychological and physiological stressors on event participants, the greater the distortion in the recollections of many/most of the participants, significant at least for a responsible historian to pay attention to the presence of distortions/inaccuracies, and report these to the readers.

As far as I know, no one has found "the issue of inaccuracies in Holocaust accounts/testimony" of sufficient interest or public importance to have done a special study. I haven't seen any special studies on the issue of inaccuracies in the accounts/testimony regarding the expulsion of German nationals from eastern European countries in 1945-1947, the issue of inaccuracies in the accounts/testimony regarding the nineteenth century Irish potato famine, the influenza epidemic of 1917-1919, or any of the other issues mentioned above either, for that matter.

Like I said, it seems historians accept at face value the Holocaust stories they encounter. To simply dismiss or brush aside this issue does not do justice to historical accuracy.

[David Thompson]

Penn44 -- No doubt you noticed that I tried to restrict my examples to similar stressful experiences. If you find an account of the holocaust questionable, step right up and challenge it. That's what this section of the forum is for. If others find your challenge questionable, they will certainly do the same.