Canadian Police Destroy Revisionist Book

Police in a western Canadian town have destroyed a public library copy of a Holocaust revisionist work published by the Institute for Historical Review. Apparently violating Canadian law, “Mounties” in the central Alberta town of Didsbury shredded a copy of The Hoax ofthe Twentieth Century, the CP news agency reported in late January.

A local high school student had borrowed the book from the town's public library, and then turned it over to police because, she said, her teacher told her it was banned. Librarian Tim Elliott said the police destroyed the book in apparent violation of Canadian law.

The police “said possessing the book was a criminal offense, and they would destroy it,” Elliott recalled. “I then contacted Canada Customs, who said importation was illegal, but possession was not.” Two days after the police first told him they had the book, Elliott tried to get it back. But “by then it was too late,” the police “had already shredded it.”

Under “hate literature” provisions of Canada's Criminal Code, police need a warrant to seize material they believe is offensive. Moreover, the owner must be given a chance to appeal the warrant before a judge. In March 1993, police officials in Ontario province, Canada's most populous, formally declared that “Holocaust denial” does not violate Canada's “hate law.” (See the May-June 1993 Journal, p. 16.)

The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, written by Dr. Arthur R. Butz, is a key revisionist work that presents detailed evidence to refute the Holocaust story of six million exterminated Jews during the Second World War. Butz' book was first published in England in 1976. Tens of thousands of copies of the American edition, which has been published by the IHR in nine printings, have been sold over the years.

History, by apprising [men] ofthe past, will enable them to judge ofthe future; it will avail them ofthe experience ofother times and other nations.
—Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782