Berlin - A US academic, Mr Norman Finkelstein, defended the publication in German of his controversial book The Holocaust Industry yesterday and urged the country that spawned the Nazis not to submit to blackmail over its past.
"It is Germany's right to reject the use of the Nazi Holocaust as a weapon for political and economic gain," the author said. Mr Finkelstein, the son of two concentration camp survivors, argues that Jewish leaders are stoking anti-Semitism in Europe by trying to force German and Swiss institutions to pay new compensation.