OUR FRIENDS THE IRANIANS AND THE GERMANS

Book fair in German city features anti-Semitic tracts

By Toby Axelrod

BERLIN, Oct. 23 (JTA) — Anti-Semitic tracts are on sale at the Frankfurt Book Fair again this year. English-language copies of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and Henry Ford’s “The International Jew” were displayed on the shelves of one of the Iranian booksellers at the fair, according to German political scientist Matthias Kuentzel, who purchased the books there last Friday.

 

Last year, the book fair, one of the world’s largest gatherings of publishers, was criticized for allowing Arabic book publishers to display Arabic versions of Holocaust denial books and other anti-Semitic texts.  Kuentzel, an author and educator specializing in anti-Semitism and Islam, told JTA that this year the books were available in English.

 

He found at one Iranian booth the “Protocols,” in an edition published by the Islamic Propaganda Organization of the Islamic Republic of Iran; Ford’s book, published by the Department of Translation and Publication, Islamic Culture and Relations Organization of the Islamic Republic of Iran; and “Tale of the ‘Chosen People’ and the Legend of ‘Historical Right’ ” by Mohammad Taqi Taqipour, who writes that a global Islamic movement will soon destroy Israel.

 

The “Protocols,” the most famous of these books, outline a supposed Jewish plan for world domination

 

German law prohibits the sale of some books, including the “Protocols” and Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” but organizers of the fair, which ended Sunday, told JTA they could take no action unless an official complaint was lodged.