Should we ban Mein Kampf?: The Book Thief Part 2

Last week I went and saw The Book Thief which is about a girl who learns to read during the Second World War, when the Nazis controlled many aspects of life, including what a German could and could not read.

The movie, which comes from the bestselling novel, takes its name from the main character, Liesel, who steals a book from a pile of smoldering books that somehow didn’t burn properly when the Nazis tried to burn them all. The book Liesel found was the Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, a novel that Nazis determined unGermanic and unmoral.

Today we are faced with a similar dilemma. Mein Kampf’s copyright will expire in 2015, seventy years after the death of Adolf Hitler. This is problematic for the German government which has for so long tried to prevent people from reading the book.

The question still remains: should people be reading it? Does it promote hate and racism? Or should it be viewed as simply a historical document that should be studied from an academic point of view? The book is banned in many places; Chapters, the Canadian bookstore, refuses to sell it and in the United States there was such a controversy the American publisher donated the profits of the book to charity. If we do make Mein Kampf more available will it make extremism and neo-Nazism more prevalent in society? Certainly many people seem to think so.

The German state of Bavaria presently holds the copyright to the book and is planning on publishing an annotated version to coincide with he expiration date of the copyright. Presently the book is banned under German law but with modern technology and the internet, it is harder, if not impossible to prevent people from reading the book. Millions of original copies are still circulating today.

The annotated version initially had support from across the globe, including the Council of Jews in German, but lately the German government has tried to cancel the project and plans to stop any publication of the book after the copyright expires in 2015.

As a journalist and author, I believe the better educated people are, the better society is, and the better democracy works.

I have not read the book but apparently it is long and tedious in most parts. It has become more a symbol of evil and tyranny and banning it only adds to its mysticism .

An annotated version of Mein Kampf will help explain Hitler’s views and the context of what he wrote. If people do wish to read Mein Kampf then it is better they read a version that at least explains the text.

A book, no matter what the contents, will not prevent racism or any number of despicable crimes from happening. Mein Kampf will never persuade anybody to become a Neo-Nazi. It is, however, a part of history, and we must learn from it so we can say “Never again!”. We will learn from it so the future will be a better place.

#meinkampf