Auschwitz museum calls on Amazon to drop Nazi books

Among anti-Semitic books available on the site is one written by a Nazi convicted of crimes against humanity. The museum called it 'hateful, virulently anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda.'


The Auschwitz museum called on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to remove Nazi-era anti-Semitic children's books from the global online shopping platform.

"Hateful, virulently antisemitic Nazi propaganda is available for sale not only on @AmazonUK," the Auschwitz Memorial tweeted at the American e-commerce billionaire.


"Books by authors like Julius Streicher can be found also on @amazon & @AmazonDE. Such books should be removed immediately. | @JeffBezos @Amazon," it wrote in a Twitter post on Friday.

The Holocaust Education Trust (HET) also tweeted a statement calling on the Amazon founder to remove the books from the site. Among those on sale is an anti-Semitic children's book called "The Poisonous Mushroom" (Der Giftpilz), written by Nazi party member Julius Streicher and published in 1938.

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Streicher "was the founder of the virulently antisemitic Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer," read the statement issued by HET. "He was executed for Crimes Against Humanity ... The front cover alone draws on longstanding and offensive antisemitic tropes."

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'The Poisonous Mushroom' by Julius Streicher, the Nazi founder of the anti-Semitic newspaper 'Der Stürmer.' The Auschwitz Museum and Holocaust Educational Trust called on Amazon to remove the book from the website.

The book is offered on Amazon in German, English, French and Spanish. Over the last year and a half, Amazon has pulled several books by far-right authors including David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, and George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party, according to the New York Times.

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Last month marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Operated by Nazi Germany from 1940 until 1945 in then-occupied Poland, Auschwitz was part of a brutal network of concentration camps across Europe set up to carry out Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's "Final Solution" of genocide against 10 million European Jews. More than 1.1 million people were killed at Auschwitz, and two-thirds of the entire Jewish population in Europe were killed by Nazis.

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lc/mm (AFP)