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Library Removes Revisionist Work

A London library has removed a book from its collection because it questions Holocaust extermination claims. A report on the incident distributed by the World Jewish Congress relates that a copy of Auschwitz: A Judge Looks at the Evidence was removed “after a local politician discovered it in the history section and voiced his complaint to the library staff.” (Source: WJC dispatch, headlined “Obscene,” in The Jewish Press [Brooklyn], June 4, 1999.)

Auschwitz: A Judge Looks at the Evidence, published by the Institute for Historical Review, is a scholarly revisionist study of Auschwitz and the “Holocaust” issue. It was written by Wilhelm Stäglich, a retired German jurist who served in 1944 with an anti-aircraft unit stationed at Auschwitz, and after the war for 20 years as an administrative judge in Hamburg. (The hardcover edition is available from the IHR for $14.95, plus shipping.)

Removal from public libraries of books presenting dissident historical views is a form of censorship, of course. In Britain, apparently, librarians will now remove any “politically incorrect” books that a “local politician” finds objectionable.

In the United States, libraries are inconsistent regarding “Holocaust denial” books. Some libraries will not accept such works, and others will quietly remove them after objections are voiced. But many American libraries, including the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, and prominent university libraries, include a range of “denial” books in their holdings, and even subscribe to the IHR’s Journal of Historical Review.

In 1979 the German edition of Stäglich’s Auschwitz book was “indexed,” effectively prohibiting its open sale in Germany, and a while later authorities seized the remaining copies from the publisher. Because of his public skepticism of Holocaust claims, in 1983 the University of Göttingen revoked his 1951 doctorate in law — on the basis of a Third Reich law.

Stäglich has been member of this Journal’s Editorial Advisory Committee since 1981. The text of his address at the Fifth IHR Conference in 1983 was published in the Spring 1984 Journal issue.