Sabina Citron

Serving as president of the Canadian Holocaust Remembrance Association, Citron filed a private criminal complaint in Toronto in November 1983 against publisher Ernst Zündel.[1] The Association argued that Zündel's pamphlets — Did Six Million Really Die? and The West, War and Islam — denied the Holocaust and injured the public interest, particularly the Canadian Jewish community, Holocaust survivors, and their families. Ontario Attorney General Roy McMurtry subsequently took over the prosecution, citing the public interest.[1]

The first trial began on January 7, 1985. The prosecution presented historical evidence and survivor testimony, including testimony from Professor Rudolf Vrba.[1] On February 28, the jury returned a guilty verdict based on Did Six Million Really Die?, while declining to convict Zündel over The West, War and Islam. Judge Hugh Locke sentenced him on March 25, 1985, to 15 months in prison and imposed a three-year restriction on his writing or publishing about the Holocaust and related subjects.[1]

The Ontario Court of Appeal allowed Zündel's appeal in January 1987 because of an issue with the trial judge's instructions to the jury, and the government prosecuted him again.[1] The second trial, held from mid-January to early May 1988, ended in another conviction and a nine-month sentence. On August 27, 1992, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled 4–3 that the Criminal Code provision used in the case infringed freedom of expression and had no force or effect.[1][2]

In 1995, Citron filed a private complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal concerning Zündel's Internet activity on the "Zündelsite."[1] The Toronto Mayor's Committee on Community and Race Relations joined the complaint, citing reasonable grounds to believe that Zündel was posting hate messages online. The tribunal found that Zündel had contravened the Canadian Human Rights Act and ordered him to stop using the Internet to promote hate, stating that "the Internet cannot be a place where hate is uncontrolled and unpunished."[1]

Citron's 1983 complaint initiated proceedings that became an early major public test of how Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms balanced freedom of expression with minority dignity and public peace.[1] Although the Supreme Court's 1992 ruling nullified the criminal convictions by striking down the false-news provision, it did not question the historical fact of the Holocaust.[1][2]

Citron's 1995 human-rights complaint extended the legal dispute into the emerging field of Internet regulation. The resulting tribunal decision applied Canadian anti-hate provisions to Zündel's online activity and ordered him to stop using the Internet to promote hate.[1] Her documented role was therefore that of an initiator of successive proceedings against Holocaust denial, first through criminal prosecution and later through human-rights law.