A Paris court today banned a French translation of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. The court ruled the book could neither be published nor circulated unless an explanatory leaflet is included with a detailed extract of the Nuremberg international court ruling on Nazism, Hitler and the book. The court also awarded 80,000 francs ($17,000) damages to the plaintiff, the International League Against Anti-Semitism (LICA).
By a strange twist of history it was LICA which 40 years ago fought hard to have the book translated into French and published in Paris. At the time, LICA felt that French public opinion should be better informed of Hitler’s plans and aspirations as outlined in Mein Kampf. LICA president Jean Pierre-Bloch said today he feels that times have changed and that France and Western Europe are already overflooded with neo-Nazi literature and do not need Hitler’s original version, too.
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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.
