The German Teachers’ Association is calling to include an annotated edition to Hitler’s Mein Kampf in the nation’s high school curriculum towards teaching the nation’s youths to distance themselves from extremism. This annotated edition is scheduled to roll off the presses in Germany in 2016. This is permitted because the Bavarian copyright expires at the end of this year, 2015.
According to reports from German, the new annotated edition will include some 3,500 notations and the teachers’ association feels students of the age of 16 should study this edition towards distancing and protecting them from such extremism.
As Shabbos was ending in Berlin, Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal, Rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin, addressed the proposition to include the book “Mein Kampf” in its new edition in the German school curriculum:
“The risk is greater than the benefit. It is a book of propaganda which poisoned the minds and hearts of millions of people. The is risk that its introduction into the school curriculum will be abused by problematic factors working to spread the ideas mentioned in it, is greater than the foreseen, doubted, benefit of teaching it as a method of vaccination against extreme opinion. In my opinion, the proposal is irresponsible and dangerous”.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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One Response
The headline suggests, wrongly, that this is out of pro-Nazi sympathies. The article explains that the people running German today want to hold up Hitler as an example of what not to do. The alternative is for German kids to grow up knowing primarily that World War II involved their country getting trashed and is something one doesn’t discuss.