Indigo Books & Music has pulled two books from its online inventory that praise Hitler and question the Holocaust.
One of the books was co-written by Holocaust-denier Ernst Zundel under the pseudonym Christof Friedrich and is called The Hitler We Loved and Why. Another is by author Peter Winter and is called Six Million: Fact or Fiction. Indigo’s website described it as “without doubt the single most important revisionist overview of the legend of the ‘Six Million’ Holocaust ever yet published.”
The Canadian bookseller took the action after receiving an inquiry about the books from The CJN. The matter was brought to The CJN’s attention by Elisa Hategan, a writer and public speaker who was once part of the white supremacist movement and who now speaks out against anti-Semitism and racism.
“We appreciate you bringing this matter to our attention. Please rest assured that we have reviewed these books and have removed them from our database,” said Krishna Nikhil, Indigo’s executive vice-president of print and strategy.
“In our efforts to provide the widest possible selection to our customers, Indigo offers tens of thousands of books for sale in our stores and millions of books for sale online. In store, we carefully curate to ensure the best possible and highest integrity selection for our customers, and we are able to vet every book,” Nikhil said.
“Online, the full catalogue and the associated book description come directly from publishers. Although it is our goal, due to the high volume of books online, we are not able to physically screen every one of the millions of titles available. We hold our publishing partners to the highest standards and those that propagate literature that violates Indigo’s standards are removed from Indigo’s system.”
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Amazon.ca, the online book retailer, continues to carry Zundel’s love tome to Hitler, as well as another Zundel book, UFOs: Nazi Secret Weapons?
Also available in the Amazon catalogue was The Six Million Reconsidered: Is the Nazi Holocaust Story a Zionist Propaganda Ploy, written by neo-Nazi William Grimstad. The Hitler We Loved and Why was available at Google Books as well as from a variety of neo-Nazi sites.
Amazon did not respond to CJN queries by press time.
Zundel is a native of Germany who lived in Canada from 1958 to 2000. While living on Carlton Street in downtown Toronto, he became a leader of the international neo-Nazi movement and faced trial for publishing Holocaust denial material. He was charged with publishing false news, but acquitted after the Supreme Court of Canada ruled the law unconstitutional.
He moved to the United States in 2000 in the middle of a human rights hearing, but was deported back to Canada in 2003 for visa violations. He was jailed for two years as a security threat and in 2005, he was deported to Germany, where he faced charges of inciting racial hatred and denying the Holocaust. He was convicted in 2007 and spent another three years in jail before being released.
Hategan said she came across the books by chance, while preparing a presentation for two Jewish women’s organizations and searching the Internet for images for a slide presentation.
“A lot of revisionist material is on there,” she said.
Hategan said she joined the white supremacist movement at age 16 after being impressed with books purporting to dismiss the Holocaust. “I felt if it’s in print in a book, it’s real,” she said.
Holocaust denial materials can fuel anti-Semitism, she added.
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Indigo’s policy precludes books that “instruct how to build weapons of mass destruction, contain child pornography, or incite people toward the annihilation of a particular group in society,” Nikhil said.
“As soon as we become aware of titles that violate these principles, they are immediately removed from our online listing as well,” he added.
A spokesperson said the retailer is also looking to remove The Turner Diaries, a book about race war in America.
