Immediate confiscation of an anti-Semitic pamphlet which angered West German officials all the way up to Chancellor Konrad Adenauer was ordered yesterday by the Federal Supreme Court.
The pamphlet, “How Many World Wars Must The Nation Lose? ” was written by Friedrich Nieland, a lumber merchant, and published in 1957 by Adolf Heimberg, a printer. The pamphlet denied that 6,000,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis, and charged that “international Jewry” ruled the world.
The Hamburg Superior Criminal Court failed to act against the pamphlet and its writer and publisher, asserting that the pamphlet had not violated the West German Federal Law against preaching anti-Semitism and race hatred, because it referred to “international Jewry” and did not attack the Jewish people.
Following an appeal by the Central Council of the Jews of Germany, a Hamburg civil court last January seized some 2,000 still undistributed copies. Also involved were two rulings by the Weimar Supreme Court that Jews were “not a circumscribed group capable of being slandered.” The Federal Supreme Court ruling reversed this Weimar decision. as the high court has done in a number of cases since the end of World War II.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
