Financial Motivations for “Holocaust” Propaganda

by Ryan Cavallius

WE KNOW THAT AT the end of World War 2 claims were made by enemies of the Reich that the latter had attempted to exterminate the Jews of Europe. Former concentration camp inmates had supposedly witnessed that. The victorious powers were happy to use such atrocity tales to facilitate convictions at Nuremberg, and have been using them ever since for the continued demonization of the Hitler government, the discrediting of National Socialist ideas, and the perpetual control of the German nation.

However, while it is certainly true that the mainstream version of the “Holocaust” has been propagated largely for political and ideological reasons, there have also been financial motivations. During World War 1, for example, Jewish relief organizations were already making holocaust claims, taking in donations, and misappropriating the money. Then, after 1945, Germany was forced to pay out hundreds of billions of dollars in reparations to Israelis and other “Holocaust survivors,” while swindlers like Elie Wiesel made fortunes marketing stories of their alleged experiences. Finally, in the 1990s a concerted effort was made by the World Jewish Congress and its allies to extort Swiss banks for what ended up being $1.25 billion, based on the false accusation that the Swiss had stolen billions from Jewish bank accounts while the Germans were killing them off.

An article in the New York Times, dated January 14, 1915, read, “…more than 6,000,000 are in the heart of the war zone; Jews whose lives are at stake and who today are subjected to every manner of suffering…”(1)

An article in the American Hebrew, dated October 31, 1919, said, “Six million men and women are dying [in] this threatened holocaust…”(2)

An advertisement in the New York Times, dated May 3, 1920, asked for readers’ financial help “to save the lives of six million people in Eastern and Central Europe,” and another one from just a few days later and placed by the same organization read, “THE APPEAL To Save Six million Men and Women in Eastern Europe from Extermination by Hunger and Disease.”(3)

Many other examples could be given of similar articles and ads from the same time period, that is, from during and shortly after the First World War. Both of the advertisements quoted above were placed by an organization called the “Greater New York Non-Sectarian Fund,” which was chaired by the wealthy Jewish banker Felix Warburg and had numerous other powerful Jews on its executive committee. The fund was administered by the “Joint Distribution Committee,” the latter having been organized by the “American Jewish Relief Committee” which had in turn been created by the more well-known American Jewish Committee.(4)

Long before the National Socialist Party came to power in Germany, these interconnected organizations were working diligently with a complicit media to convince the American public that millions of Jews faced a holocaust in Europe. They launched fund-raising drives and collected huge sums of money in donations, large portions of which were then used to fund Communist and Zionist projects like communal agricultural settlements in the Soviet Union and for-profit banks. By 1927, more than 80% of the money collected was being used for these “constructive undertakings” rather than on relief for the people described as “suffering” in the ads.(5)

Money-making played a role in post-World War 2 “Holocaust” propaganda as well. After the war, the German government had to pay reparations to everyone who was deemed a “Holocaust survivor.” To date, Germany has doled out hundreds of billions of dollars, of which much has been used to outfit the state of Israel.

In the 1970s, then-president of the World Jewish Congress, Nahum Goldmann, wrote that more than half of Israel’s infrastructure came to it as a result of “Holocaust reparations.” “All the trains in Israel are German,” he stated, “the ships are German, and the same goes for electrical installations and a great deal of Israel’s industry… and that is setting aside the individual pensions paid to survivors. Israel today receives hundreds of millions of dollars in German currency each year.”(6)

Many concentration camp survivors either exaggerated or outright invented their stories in order to qualify for monetary compensation from Germany. Some even took it a step further, signing book deals and charging hefty speaking fees to tell the public what they experienced. Here, the more sensational the account was, the more money they could potentially make from it. Jerzy Kosinski, Binjamin Wilkomirski and Elie Wiesel have all been exposed as frauds who fabricated their stories of survival for marketing purposes.(7)

And, as one might expect, Hollywood filmmakers have taken the same approach, turning the atrocity tales into a multi-billion dollar cash-cow.

Jewish claims organizations purporting to represent survivors also made money from the “Holocaust.” In the 1950s, an umbrella organization called the “Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany” negotiated a financial settlement with the German government. The “Conference” included the American Jewish Committee and the Joint Distribution Committee, two of the groups involved with the World War 1-era holocaust profiteering. Not surprisingly, they were still up to their old tricks more than thirty years later; the Claims Conference embezzled large sums of money intended for individual claimants and used it to pay its executives enormous salaries and finance “various pet projects.”(8)

In the 1990s, the World Jewish Congress (then headed by one Edgar Bronfman, the son of a Claims Conference official) led a campaign to extort Swiss banks out of money for their alleged wartime activities. “I want $3 billion or northward,” the WJC president said.(9)

Charges were brought against the Swiss in courts of law and public opinion: “conspiracy to defraud Holocaust victims,” “buying stolen Jewish gold from Nazi Germany,” and “withholding Jewish assets from rightful heirs” after the war — all lies or exaggerations. The Swiss admitted to knowledge of dormant accounts, but considered the trumped-up campaign against them extortion and blackmail. With its powerful connections, the WJC was able to coordinate an incredible attack against Switzerland. The full weight of organized international Jewry and the US political establishment was brought to bear, including the House and Senate banking committees. Wealthy pension fund investors pulled their money out of Swiss accounts. Local and state governments across the United States imposed sanctions, and the Clinton administration publicly demanded that the Swiss pay up. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, the World Council of Orthodox Jewish Communities, and others filed class-action lawsuits. All the while, the major media from all around the world ceaselessly repeated the false allegations against the Swiss, replete with slander and moral vilification of the worst sort. After nearly three years of resistance, the pressure became too much and the Swiss gave in. They agreed to pay $1.25 billion — not as much as Bronfman wanted, but enough to appease him. Those for whom he had ostensibly been seeking justice, “Holocaust survivors” and their descendants, saw very little of those funds, with the bulk of the money going to the usual suspects and places: board members of the interested organizations, their lawyers, “Holocaust museums” and “educational” projects, etc.

It goes without saying that many Jews did suffer and die during and after the war, some in German camps. Not all of them were exactly innocent people, but some were. However, it is clear that the state of Israel, international Jewish organizations, and even individual survivors have turned the “Holocaust” into a trademarked money-making ploy, selling it to an unsuspecting public and weaponizing it for the extortion of whole countries.

Some readers of this article are probably surprised to learn that Jewish holocaust propaganda can be traced all the way back to World War 1. This proves a financial angle to the Jews’ claims of persecution that predates the political conflict between National Socialists and Jews, and certainly predates the World War 2, Auschwitz, and all the rest.

Of course, “Holocaust” lies and part-lies serve political and ideological ends, too. The story of six million Jews dead in an attempted genocide has been very effective in making National Socialism seem evil, thereby keeping the White masses from becoming sympathetic to it. But, as I hope to have proven in this article, there is also an important financial element to “Holocaust” propaganda too. We would do well to pay attention to it.

Notes

1. Reproduced in Don Heddesheimer, The First Holocaust: Jewish Fund Raising Campaigns with Holocaust Claims During & After World War One, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: The Barnes Review, 2011), 92.
2. Ibid., 134.
3. Ibid., 118-19.
4. Ibid., 34 and 118-121.
5. Ibid., 64, 69, et seq.
6. The Jewish Paradox. Quoted in David Duke, My Awakening: A Path to Racial Understanding (Mandeville, LA: Free Speech Press, 2008), 469.
7. Norman G. Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 2003), 45-81.
8. Ibid., 85-86.
9. Ibid., 102. For the full account of the campaign against the Swiss, from which the following synopsis is taken, see Finkelstein, 89-120, as well as his postscripts and appendix. He also describes extortion campaigns against Eastern European countries which I do not discuss in this article.

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