Il Giornale's Mein Kampf 'alarming' (2)

(ANSA) - Tel Aviv, June 10 - 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.