If you're a historian, why didn't you write a serious study about the subject? Why didn't you do research yourself? Interview people, etc.?

Why should I interview people?

To find the truth.

Elan Steinberg was enraged that I didn't interview him. Why would I? I call him a master of disinformation. He has nothing interesting to tell me. I can easily do without him.

So what made you write this book?

This book is a result of 15 years of reflection. While I was working to get financial compensation for my mother, I listed on a piece of paper around 60 things that really bothered me about the Holocaust business. One of these was the whole notion of "survivors." In the early days, I knew that a lot of Jews were stretching it a bit in order to be considered as "survivors" under the German reparation laws. If you were in the Soviet Union during the war, you weren't eligible. So I knew people had falsified their papers -- which was fairly easy because there was no way to prove it. The only numbers there were were from Auschwitz.

So for a piece I did about the reparations issue, I looked in the old agreements, from the '50s, the Luxembourg Agreements. The German government paid in all about $50 billion. And in addition it gave $10 million a year between 1953 and 1965 to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany -- a billion dollars in current values. The Germans said that only 15 percent of this money went to the victims. The large chunk of the rest of it, according to Ronald Zweig, an expert on the subject, went to Jewish communities in the Arab world, such as Iraq, and institutions such as Yad Vashem in Israel.

You know why they didn't give everything to the survivors? That's what is so amusing. They said there weren't any victims anymore. All their needs had been met. So the irony is, after misappropriating the money in the '50s because there weren't any more victims, now they claim all these needy Holocaust victims have languished in poverty all these years, because the Germans gave them no money. I find that funny.

Your mother received $3,500 from the German government right after the war. What happened?

In the '50s my mother, a mathematician who worked for Chase Manhattan Bank, was diagnosed by a doctor -- I believe it was a Jewish doctor -- as having extreme hysteria, but this was not from her experiences in Majdanek, she was told, but from her difficulty with adjusting in the U.S. -- which is, of course, a filthy diagnosis. The Claims Conference was exactly designed to pay out money to people like my mother, who were either unfairly or inadequately compensated by the initial reparations. Cases like hers were being corrected by giving a lump sum. But she didn't get a penny. Only so-called outstanding Jewish leaders and rabbis got anything.

My father got injured in Auschwitz and was given a lifetime pension by the Germans. They delivered the money promptly and efficiently. I still remember the blue envelopes from Trier. My father had Alzheimer's near the end of his life and I was his guardian. Every three months I had to go to the German consulate to pick up his checks and to prove that he was still alive. At the end of his life it came down to $600 a month. All in all, $250,000 during his lifetime.

All the survivors I talk to -- the Finkelstein residence quickly became known as CCBC, Claims Conference Buster Central -- say the same thing: We want the money that was distributed by the German government; we don't want the money given to the Jewish organizations. I think that is one of the most devastating insights on the Holocaust industry -- that the victims of Nazi persecution trust the German government more than they do the Jewish organizations.

On the one hand you complain about Jewish organizations claiming too much money; on the other you complain that people like your mother didn't get enough.

Some people misinterpret my book as saying I'm against compensation. Oh no, I'm not! I'm all for compensation. But it should only go to the real victims, and not to pseudo victims or to Jewish communities and organizations.

Your parents are Holocaust survivors. Doesn't that make you a second-generation survivor?

I think such a concept is repulsive. That's simply an effort to milk the Holocaust for another generation. If I had ever said that to my mother, she would have given me a good smack in the face! And rightfully so!

You suggest but never state explicitly that only camp survivors are real Holocaust survivors. What about Jews who fled to the Soviet Union, came back and had nothing -- why not call them "Holocaust survivors" as well?

Fine, then we should call Palestinians "Holocaust survivors." If you make the definition so elastic, so flexible that it includes refugees, then you should count them all.

That wouldn't be fair to the real survivors.

It's not a question of fair. You can't argue on the one hand that the Holocaust is fraught with moral meaning, and then trivialize the term "Holocaust survivor" by including everyone. There is a difference whether you spent the war on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, like Mr. Kissinger, or you spent it in Auschwitz.

Mr. Kissinger is not calling himself a survivor, is he?

Since Hitler targeted all of world Jewry, Israel Singer says, anybody who has survived is a Holocaust survivor. But I would say, what about all the Vietnamese people who suffered from the politics of Mr. Kissinger? Are they Holocaust survivors? No, no, we can't call them that. Do you think the Vietnamese received one nickel of compensation? Forget it. The U.S. won't even officially apologize.

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