Target and Barnes & Noble both announced that they would stop selling four books promulgating Holocaust denial at the urging of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
The Jerusalem Post reported that the books were “Not Guilty At Nuremberg” by Carlos Porter, a Holocaust denier, “The Auschwitz Myth – Legend or Reality?” by former Nazi officer Wilhelm Stäglich, “A Censorship Is Taking Place!” by Germar Rudolf, who was convicted by Germany of being a Holocaust denier and “What Is Truth?” by Paul Rassinier, a Holocaust denying communist.
“We assume these large online booksellers do not mass-market books promoting terrorism or pedophilia,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action Agenda at the Wiesenthal Center, said in a statement. “At a time of surging anti-Semitic hate crimes here in the US, it is beyond the pale that a book would be marketed by someone who insults the memory of 6 million Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide.”
Target told the Wiesenthal Center, “It’s never our intention to offend our guests with the merchandise we carry. Please know that we have removed this book from our assortment.”
Barnes & Noble similarly told the Wiesenthal Center, “As soon as we are made aware of any such offending titles, we take prompt action to remove offending titles in accordance with our policy, as we did with ‘Not Guilty at Nuremberg.’ We had not been aware of this title’s existence on barnesandnoble.com. Upon receipt of your correspondence, in accordance with our content policy, we immediately removed it from our website.”
StandWithUs CEO and Co-Founder Roz Rothstein, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, tweeted that Target and Barnes & Noble “never should have been selling them in the first place” and that StandWithUs and CAMERA [Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America] were also protesting against Target and Barnes & Noble selling those books.
GOOD NEWS!!! Target, & Barnes and Noble stop selling several holocaust denial books (never should have been selling them in the first place) after protest from Jewish groups including Simon Wiesenthal, CAMERA, & @StandWithUs @CAMERAorg @simonwiesenthal https://t.co/s9EExfG7cC
— Roz Rothstein (@RozRothstein) October 27, 2021
UPDATE: Walmart has also announced that they will stop selling the books, according to the Wiesenthal Center.
