BERLIN (AFP-EJP)---A top figure in Germany's Jewish community said he wants Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" -- banned in Germany since 1945 -- to be republished, but together with an accompanying commentary.
"In principle I am in favour of the book being made public with a commentary," both in normal book form and on the Internet, Stephan Kramer, general secretary of the Central Council of Jews, told broadcaster Deutschlandfunk radio on Friday.
Hitler penned "Mein Kampf" ("My struggle") in the 1920s, combining elements of autobiography and setting out his views on Aryan racial purity, his hatred of Jews and his opposition to communism.
He dictated the work to his aide Rudolf Hess while in prison in Bavaria following the failed Munich "Beer Hall" putsch of 1923.
Kramer said the Central Council of Jews was ready to help write the commentary and to negotiate with the government of Bavaria, which owns the publishing rights until 2015, 70 years after Hitler's death.
In Germany, it is illegal to distribute the tome except in special circumstances. Nazi symbols like the swastika and performing the stiff-armed Hitler salute are also outlawed.
Purchasers who can prove an academic purpose may secure an existing copy. Otherwise though, sales are banned and Bavaria, which was granted the German rights to the book by the postwar occupying powers, refused to authorise new copies.
Deutschlandfunk said Bavarian authorities had rejected the idea of loosening the restrictions on publication.
"(To do so) would get enormous political attention worldwide, and probably be met with incomprehension," it quoted the Bavarian Finance Ministry as saying in a statement.