Poland and jewish restitution question if any?

Poland and jewish restitution question if any?

Finkelstein: Because of its ruthless extortion tactics, in order to extract compensation monies in Switzerland, in Germany, and now eastern Europe. If you take for example the case of Poland, the holocaust industry is demanding roughly in the order of 50 billion dollars in compensation from Poland. That sum of money will leave Poland broke, and in doing so they are throwing peasants off their land, tenants out of their homes, school children out of schools, that's what they're doing.

Finkelstein: Yes, and I think what's particularly egregious about these practices - let's take the concrete example of Poland. My mother's father owned a tobacco store in Warsaw. My father's father owned a small lumber mill in Warsaw. The holocaust industry has declared itself the legitimate heir of all the assets of the Jews who were killed during World War II. So they're claiming my mother's father's tobacco store and my father's father's lumber mill as theirs. That they're the legitimate inheritors. They never asked me, they never asked my brothers. We would not approve of evicting these Polish people from their homes. So I think the claim they're making is on a false pretext. They are not the legitimate heirs. That's my family, not theirs. And they're doing it without the knowledge of Jews.


Haaretz: Survivors' protest makes foreign journalists gasp, security vanish (08.06.2007)
"I want the Germans to know where the money they gave Israel went," he said angrily। "I want the Germans to know that Israel took the money we should have received. I want them to answer one question: Where did our money go?"
Norman Gary Finkelstein (born December 8, 1953) is an American political scientist and author, specialising in Jewish-related issues, especially the Holocaust and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A graduate of SUNY Binghamton, he received his Ph.D in Political Science from Princeton University. He has held faculty positions at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College, New York University, and most recently, DePaul University, where he was an assistant professor from 2001 to 2007.
Beginning with his doctoral thesis at Princeton, Finkelstein's career has been marked by controversy. A self-described 'forensic scholar,' he has written sharply critical academic reviews of several prominent writers and scholars whom he accuses of misrepresenting the documentary record in order to defend Israel’s policies and practices. His writings, noted for their support of the Palestinian cause[1] have dealt with politically-charged topics such as Zionism, the demographic history of Palestine and his allegations of the existence of a "Holocaust Industry" that exploits the memory of the Holocaust to further Israeli and financial interests. Citing linguist and politicial activist Noam Chomsky as an example, Finkelstein notes that it is "possible to unite exacting scholarly rigor with scathing moral outrage,"[2] and supporters and detractors alike have remarked on the polemical style of Finkelstein's work.[3][4] However, its content has been praised by eminent historians such as Raul Hilberg and Avi Shlaim,[4] as well as Chomsky.
Amidst considerable public debate, Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul in June 2007, and placed on administrative leave for the 2007-2008 academic year. Among the controversial aspects of this decision were attempts by Alan Dershowitz, a notable opponent of Finkelstein's, to derail Finkelstein's tenure bid.[5] On September 5, 2007 Finkelstein announced his resignation after coming to a settlement with the university on generally undisclosed terms.[6][7] An official statement from DePaul strongly defended the decision to deny Finkelstein tenure, and asserted that outside influence played no role in their decision. In the university's official statement, nonetheless, Finkelstein was praised "as a prolific scholar and outstanding teacher."[8]
Contents[hide]
1 Personal background and education
2 Academic career and controversies
2.1 From Time Immemorial
2.1.1 The book
2.1.2 The thesis
2.1.3 The follow up
2.2 The Holocaust Industry
2.3 Criticism of Alan Dershowitz's The Case for Israel
2.4 Tenure denial and resignation
2.5 Praise and criticism of Finkelstein's scholarship
3 Publications
3.1 Articles and translations
3.2 Interviews with Finkelstein
4 Others on Finkelstein and his works
4.1 Academic reviews of books by Finkelstein
4.2 Reviews of books by Finkelstein
4.3 Profiles of Finkelstein
4.4 Critics of Finkelstein and replies
5 Notes
6 External links
//

[edit] Personal background and education
Finkelstein has written of his parents' experiences during World War II. His mother, Maryla Husyt Finkelstein, daughter of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish father, grew up in Warsaw, Poland, and survived the Warsaw Ghetto and the Majdanek concentration camp, as well as two slave labor camps. Her first husband — a boyfriend whom her father insisted, on religious grounds, she marry before the two entered the ghetto bunker — died in the war. She considered the day of her liberation as the most horrible day of her life, since it first struck her then that she was alone, none of her parents and siblings having managed to survive. His father, Zacharias Finkelstein, was a survivor of both the Warsaw Ghetto and the Auschwitz concentration camp.[9]
Finkelstein grew up in New York City. In his forthcoming memoir, Finkelstein recalls his strong youthful identification with the outrage that his mother, witness to the genocidal atrocities of World War II, felt at the carnage wrought by the United States in Vietnam. He had 'internalized (her) indignation', a trait which he admits rendered him 'insufferable' when talking of the Vietnam War, and which imbued him with a 'holier-than-thou' attitude at the time which he now regrets. But Finkelstein regards his absorption of his mother's outlook — the refusal to put aside a sense of moral outrage in order to get on with one's life — as a positive virtue. Subsequently, his reading of Noam Chomsky played a seminal role in tailoring the passion bequeathed to him by his mother to the necessity of maintaining intellectual rigor in the pursuit of the truth.[10]
He completed his undergraduate studies at Binghamton University in New York in 1974, after which he studied at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. He went on to earn his Master's degree in political science from Princeton University in 1980, and later his PhD in political studies, also from Princeton. Finkelstein wrote his doctoral thesis on Zionism, and it was through this work that he first attracted controversy, which hurt his prospects for a university career.[citation needed] Before gaining academic employment, Finkelstein was a part-time social worker with teenage dropouts in New York. He then taught successively at Rutgers University, New York University, Brooklyn College, and Hunter College and, until recently, taught at DePaul University in Chicago.