Belgian authorities were reported today to be seeking to learn the identity of the publisher of a reprint of Hitler’s Mein Kampf to determine whether the republication is a violation of Belgian law.
Dries van Agt, the Dutch Foreign Minister, said in The Hague yesterday that he had asked the Dutch Embassy in Brussels to check reports the Hitler opus had been reprinted in Belgium and was on sale in supermarkets in Flanders in Belgium. A reprint was confiscated in The Netherlands in 1974 on grounds that material advocating racism and xenophobia was illegal.
Dutch authorities were reported to be afraid that the reprints, believed to be an sale in Flemish Belgium, might get into the Netherlands.
Anti-Semitic and racist materials are violations of Belgian law but Belgian Justice Ministry sources said the publisher could argue that Mein Kampf was of great historical value, and that he had issued the reprint for that reason.
The sources said that a decision on whether to prosecute the publisher would have to come from the prosecutor of the area where the book was on sale or where it was printed, the latter being the reason for the search for the publisher.
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.
