Rightwing daily Il Giornale's
decision to distribute Hitler's Mein Kampf free to boost sales
tomorrow is "unprecedented and alarming", the Wiesenthal Centre
said Friday.
Centre director Efraim Zuroff said "the fact that someone
thought of using Mein Kampf to boost sales is an unprecedented
and alarming fact".
Zuroff said "Fascism and racism, the refuge of extremists,
rise up again when economic conditions are not good. Generally
speaking the advent of Fascism always has that root. It appears
that that newspaper has detected a demand, whether it be
curiosity or identification".
The Israeli embassy in Rome said it had been "surprised" by
Il Giornale's decision to give out the free copies of Mein
Kampf.
"If they had asked us we would have advised them to
distribute much better books for studying and understanding the
Shoah," embassy sources told ANSA.
Italian Jews earlier condemned the planned free
distribution of Hitler's autobiography together with Saturday's
edition of Il Giornale, which is owned by the brother of former
centre-right premier Silvio Berlusconi.
"The free distribution...is a squalid fact that is light
years away from all logic of studying the Shoah and the
different factors that led the whole of humanity to sink into an
abyss of unending hatred, death and violence," the president of
the Union of Italian Jewish Communities Renzo Gattegna said in a
statement.
"It must be stated clearly: the Giornale's operation is
indecent. And in particular the message must come from those who
are called to oversee and intervene concerning the professional
ethics of Italian journalists," Gattegna concluded.
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