Poland – The Polish publisher of extracts of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf has been convicted of breaching copyright in a case brought by German officials who aim to stop spreading the Nazi leader’s ideas.
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Poland’s PAP news agency reported today that the publisher, identified only as Marek S, received a three-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, from a court in the southwestern city of Wroclaw. He was also fined 10,000 zlotys ($3,200).
The German state of Bavaria has owned the rights to Mein Kampf since 1945, when Hitler committed suicide as his regime’s defeat neared in the closing weeks of World War II.
Bavarian authorities, who say they keep a close guard on the book’s copyright in an effort to smother attempts to rehabilitate Nazism, have regularly brought cases against publishers.
They launched their case in Poland in 2005 against Marek S and his publishing house, XXL. They had sought an eight-month suspended sentence.
In 2007, a Wroclaw court had decided to drop the case, ruling that while the publishing house had breached copyright, it had also acted in good faith and withdrawn the book from shelves and destroyed copies in its possession.
The print run of the Polish edition was 20,000.
…He (the polish publisher of that rotten book, mein kampf), was preaching to a highly receptive audience! We could see the difference between today’s German Government and poland. The Germans have laws on the books prohibiting to publish such poison. But the polish courts “go easy” on that marek… (don’t wan to say what it rhymes with)…!!!
Oh…and the US publisher is Houghton Mifflin “a leading educational publisher in the United States”. The book was banned in one major Canadian bookstore (the owner is Jewish) but I’ve seen that it is available in another major bookstore, both in English and French.
Personally, I doubt that banning access to historical texts that are linked with major events of the past is the right move. Those who enjoy its hateful content will find it anyway – nothing flies faster on the internet than a text file, and those who would read it for research purposes have the right to be offended that the state treats them like children. Though I agree that the thing casts an evil aura, it always seems strange to see it in a library or on the net.