Posted on 02/22/2005 4:59:32 PM PST by wagglebee
BERLIN -- A German state that holds the rights to Adolf Hitler's book "Mein Kampf" said Tuesday it was seeking legal action to prevent the book from being published in Poland.
The book, which details the Nazi dictator's anti-Semitic views and other beliefs, is due to go on sale in a few days. Polish publisher XXL said it wants to make a historical record available, but it also cites "a 1,000-year-old worry" among Poles about "the German dream of vast fertile lands and natural resources in the east." Authorities in the state of Bavaria, which the victorious World War II allies designated as the guardian of Hitler's estate, issued a statement Tuesday noting that they hold the rights to "Mein Kampf."
"Bavaria applies those rights very restrictively to prevent the spread of Nazi ideology," state Finance Minister Kurt Faltlhauser said.
Bavaria has asked Germany's Foreign Ministry to instruct its diplomats in Poland to seek a court injunction against the book, he said.
"Mein Kampf," or "My Struggle," is banned from public display or sale in Germany although it is available for historical research in libraries.
In Poland, XXL has printed an initial run of 2,000 copies. The planned publication comes at a time of renewed tension over threats by some Germans to sue for the return of ancestral property they lost in Poland at the end of World War II. Those claims are not supported by the German government.
Nazi Germany started the war by invading Poland in 1939, subjected the country to a brutal occupation that cost millions of lives and set up death camps on Poland as part of the Holocaust, in which 6 million European Jews died.
The book was banned in Poland during the decades of communist rule that ended in 1989. When a first edition was published in Polish in 1992, prosecutors questioned whether its publisher was fomenting racial hatred, and that version is no longer available.
The new edition is unlikely to raise legal problems because its foreword puts it in a historical context, said Zbigniew Holda, a legal expert who sits on the board of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights.
What? You mean even the ultra-leftist Schroeder wants TO HIDE from the spectre of Hitler??? :-) Now that is just not acceptable EU form, these days...is it? -- afterall they want to arm COMMIE CHINA to spite the U.S. and make more blood-money....do I see some hypocrisy here??? :-)
I think you are right on. The ban on Nazi imagery and references seems more like an attempt to hide rather than prevent.
Goes to motive...
If only more people outside of Germany had read Mein Kampf before WWII, perhaps it never would have started in the first place.
I think they ought to be made to read it. It's dreadfully turgid. I think most kids would find it exceedingly boring.
And if Poland refuses, what is Germany gonna do about it? Invade?
Then they can invade Harvard College, where every Jewish professor in social studies assigned Mein Kampf.
Given what the Nazis did in/to Poland during WWII, I doubt that any Poles would be moved to embrace Nazism by reading "Mein Kampf". Beat the crap out of a visiting Kraut, maybe, but embrace Nazism, never.
Germany just doesn't want too many comparisons drawn between the growing anti-semitism in Europe and Hitler's eugenics.
In other words, Germany is afraid that if people begin to truly understand Nazism/fascism, they will begin to get nervous about what Germany and the EU are up to now.
Exactly.
Is it the German position that the sale of the book in Germany is illegal, and the territory currently called "Poland" is actually the German lands of Pomerania, East Prussia and Danzig, an thus the sale would violate German law?
If they are worried about people reading Mein Kempf, and the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion, in Poland, then they should be even more worried about the millions (billions?) reading such trash in places like the CIS, the PRC, nearly all Muslim countries and even in Latin America. Poland is chump change when it comes to totalitarian resurgence.
It is my personal belief (and I believe it is also espoused in the Bill of Rights) that to ban any political party or ideology is in itself a form of totalitarianism. Free speech means that even the most outrageous ideologies have the right to a forum. Illegal activities can be punished, but ideals should not be banned.
I agree entirely with your post 1 and post 17.
Thanks
Kempf > s/b > Kampf
Just a more peaceful way for the Nazis to burn books and wipe out history that might not match the will of the State. Same old shit, different dictator.
Jefferson did write this, it is the phrase which follows "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is an overlooked passage, but very fitting:
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
That was certainly my take on it.
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