You go a step further and argue that the "Holocaust industry" has become an even bigger Holocaust denier than the usual Holocaust deniers. How so?

The official number of Holocaust survivors the Israeli government now gives is a million. Or 960,000, to be exact. At the same time Jewish organizations have been claiming, since the early '90s, that 10,000 die each month. So that would mean that in 1990 there were 2 million survivors left. In 1990, not more that a quarter could be alive from World War II. That means 8 million in May 1945. Well, there were fewer than 8 million Jews in all of Nazi-occupied Europe. In other words, if these numbers are correct, the Holocaust didn't happen. As my mother used to say, if everyone who claims to be a Holocaust survivor actually is one, who did Hitler kill?

In 1998, Swiss banks restituted $1.25 billion to Jewish organizations for dormant Jewish accounts. Should they get their money back?

The case should have been handled by the international Claims Resolution Tribunal, instead of by the World Jewish Restitution Organization. They could have processed the claims and given out the money to those who deserve it.

By the way, nobody noticed one of the most interesting revelations in the book: that banks in the U.S. also sit on dormant Jewish accounts from the war. It's not even my own finding. It's on Page 2 of the Volcker Report [the $500 million audit report on Switzerland that came out in 1999]. It amounts to $6 million, of which only $500,000 is going to be paid. In other words, the American record is worse than the Swiss! That's what Seymour Rubin, American delegate during the negotiations, testified to the House Banking Committee. Not a word reported anywhere. Not a word.

What American banks are involved?

Nobody knows. We have to do a $500 million research report just like the Swiss to find out. We might never. We would be on a slow boat to Munich.

You are totally opposed to the claims that are now being laid on property owned by the 3.5 million Jews who lived in Poland. Your family is from Poland. You could get some money back after all.

No! It never occurred to us. We don't want the money. My mother's father owned a little tobacco store, my father's father owned a little lumber mill. Jewish organizations are claiming back my grandparents' property without asking our permission. We never gave our sanction! It's grave robbery!

I say: Enough. The American Jewish community is rich enough. It doesn't need to evict Polish peasants from their land, Polish tenants from their homes and Polish sick from the hospitals for more money. They have plenty of money. Mr. Bronfman just sold Seagram for $27 billion. That's plenty. You don't have to impoverish Polish people even more.

What if your grandparents' lumber mill is owned not by a poor Polish family but by a wealthy former Communist apparatchik? Still not interested?

That wouldn't make any difference.

Have you ever been to Auschwitz?

No. I've lived with the Holocaust for 40 years. That's enough. I don't need to have more of it. I'm not like one of those second-generation Holocaust victims that go lie in a gas oven.

Have you seen "Schindler's List"?

I never had the nerves. I tried to see some of those films. I started with "Sophie's Choice." I left after 40 minutes. I thought it was vulgar. I didn't see Claude Lanzmann's "Shoah," but my parents saw it and they both liked it very much.

Your book is meant to preserve the legacy of your parents, who both died in 1995. Would they have been pleased by the book?

My mother was one of the smartest people I've known. I put a lot of her wisdom in the book, so I think she would have liked it. I don't know about my father. He didn't say much. Perhaps both of my parents, like most Holocaust survivors, would have had a little difficulty with my views on Israel, which is perfectly understandable.

Weren't you afraid that your book would fall into the wrong hands and be used against exactly the causes you stand for?

I thought about that. I recognize that problems can arise from the book. I had to do a kind of moral balancing act. I asked myself: Which poses the greater danger now, the Holocaust industry or the Holocaust deniers? Actually, what I wanted to do is disarm the Holocaust industry and the Holocaust deniers at the same time.

How are you disarming the Holocaust deniers? Now they say: "Told you so."

If David Irving [the British Holocaust denier] is saying, "Well, an Auschwitz survivor is born every day," he can say that, because if you look at the numbers of the Holocaust industry, it's true. The way you defang the deniers is by scrupulously preserving the historical record.

The only way we can learn from the Holocaust is by restoring it as a rational object of historical inquiry, and the only way we can do that is by putting the Holocaust industry out of business.

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