A proposal for distribution of an anti-Nazi pamphlet among students in secondary and vocational schools of the Rhineland-Pfalz state was rejected today by the state’s Educational Minister, on grounds that the pamphlet presented German history as a history of “a disease.”
The pamphlet was entitled “The Roots of Fascist and National Socialist Action,” and was written by Dr. Fritz Bauer, Frankfurt Chief Prosecutor. The German Youth Organization for the West German state had proposed that such a brochure be distributed without charge to the students for political education purposes.
Dr. A. Orth, Education Minister, a Christian Democratic deputy in the state’s Parliament, called the brochure “questionable.” He cited an “expert opinion” by a university teacher he did not name that the brochure presented German history “in a dangerously simplifying and false way,” by presenting it “as a history of a disease.” Dr. Bauer had stressed the trend of Germany’s churches toward authoritarian systems.
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