A Spanish court has ruled that a Barcelona publishing house did not violate the law when it published a cartoon book satirizing the Holocaust.
But the plaintiffs, who include the local B’nai B’rith chapter and an organization of Holocaust survivors, plan to appeal the lower court’s decision, which absolves Editorial Makoki and its director, Damia Carulla.
The court dismissed requests by B’nai B’rith and Amicale Mauthausen, a Holocaust survivors collective in Barcelona, to penalize Carulla, who might have faced one to six months in jail. B’nai B’rith lawyer Dalia Levinson said he got off on grounds of freedom of expression and because the court decided that no offense had been intended.
The book, titled "Hitler-SS," treats the Holocaust sarcastically as black humor. Before Editorial Makoki ran off 5,000 copies in 1990, it was the subject of a lawsuit in France.
The cartoons were drawn by the French illustrator Vuillemin, and the dialogue is by a scriptwriter named Gourio.
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