SOURCE: "Revisionist History in the Library: To Facilitate Access or Not to Facilitate Access?" in Canadian Library Journal, Vol. 48, No. 4, October, 1991, pp. 319-24.

In the following essay, Katz addresses the major questions that have been raised over the acquisition and dissemination of Holocaust denial literature in Canadian libraries.

In her very provocative article, "Lies about the Holocaust," (1980) Lucy Dawidowicz describes the concept of "historical revision" (the practice of "reinterpreting the past") as a necessary part of the historian's job. Herself an eminent historian of the Jewish Holocaust, Dawidowicz makes the observation that "every historical subject has undergone revision as each new generation rewrites the history of the past in the light of its own perspectives and values."

New information and the discovery of hitherto unknown documents or artifacts can change entirely the generally accepted picture of a particular event, era, person, or civilization—even if that picture has...