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GERMAN TEACHERS PUSH HITLER'S 'MEIN KAMPF' FOR SCHOOLS?

1st reprinting of manifesto in 70 years heading to bookstores

Teachers and politicians in Germany want a new, annotated version of Adolf Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf” to be incorporated into the country’s classroom lessons on politics and history.

The German teachers’ union and Social-Democratic Party want excerpts to be included in the school curriculum as a tool to teach students about the roots of racism and modern anti-Semitism in Germany.

The Institute for Contemporary History in Munich is reprinting the book and selling it in bookstores starting next week, reports CNN. The copyright held for 70 years by the state of Bavaria expired Jan. 1, 70 years after the Nazi leader’s death.

“To historically unmask this anti-Semitic, dehumanizing polemical pamphlet and to explain the propaganda mechanism through appropriately qualified teachers is a task of modern education,” SDP lawmaker Ernst Dieter Rossmann told the German newspaper Handelsblatt.

German Education Secretary Johanna Wanka said the new book comes with 3,500 annotations from scholars to ensure Hitler’s views about eugenics, race theory and other topics don’t go “uncontradicted” and that it’s “aimed at promoting political education and is easily comprehensible.”

Wanka said “students have questions, and it is right that they can get rid of these in the classroom and talk about the issue,” according to Russia Today.

Historians contend the new edition exposes Hitler’s “lies, half-truths and vicious tirades.”

“It seeks to thoroughly deconstruct Hitler’s propaganda in a lasting manner and thus to undermine the still effective symbolic power of the book,” the Institute for Contemporary History said.

Educator Josef Kraus believes blocking the book from schools would only increase students’ interest in its message.

“What’s much more dangerous is remaining silent or completely banning the book,” he told Haaretz. “Nowadays, with the power of the Internet, everyone has access to everything. So it’s more important to me that something like this can be discussed in a differentiated and critical manner.”

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Josef Shuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, seems to agree with Kraus.

“Knowledge of ‘Mein Kampf’ is still important to explain National Socialism and the Holocaust,” Shuster told Russia Today.

Charlotte Knobloch, head of the Jewish community in Munich, took a different position, telling the newspaper that she opposed teaching the book in German schools.

“So long as German students know virtually nothing about the Jews, other than the Holocaust, and don’t learn about the Jewish religion, the flowering of Jewish life in Germany before 1933 and the accomplishments for which our country owes the Jews, using that profoundly anti-Jewish diatribe as teaching material would be irresponsible,” she told Haaretz.

Hitler wrote “Mein Kampf” in two volumes between 1924 and 1926 before the Nazis usurped power. It was the most important documentation of Hitler’s intentions, as he declared ahead of time what horrors he would unleash on Europe, Jews and the world.

“There is hardly any book that is more overladen with such a multitude of myths, that awakens such disgust and anxiety, that ignites curiosity and stirs speculation, while simultaneously exuding an aura of the mysterious and forbidden,” the institute said.

Interestingly, the release of “Mein Kampf” comes on the heels of a popular new German movie called “Guess Who’s Back” about a resurrected Adolf Hitler attempting to make his way in modern German society.

David Wnendt, the film’s director, told the Washington Post crowds would salute and take selfies with the film’s star during filming in 2014. They would also complain to the actor about how foreigners were ruining the country.

“These extreme opinions are not coming from the fringes, but from the center,” Wnendt said. “Not neo-Nazis, but normal middle-class people.”

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2016/01/german-teachers-push-hitlers-mein-kampf-for-schools/#tE8IDJwM5LwqHMXP.99