A Polish translation of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf is to be published next week. While the promotion of fascism is illegal in Poland, the book will be published as an academic text, accompanied by a critical commentary and footnotes written by a scholar.
The new Polish edition is believed to be only the second scholarly version of Hitler’s political manifesto to be published since the Second World War, following an annotated German version released in 2016. It is to be sold at a “price prohibitive for the average reader”, reports Rzeczpospolita.
The project is the result of years of work by Professor Eugeniusz Król, a historian and political scientist. He tells Deutsche Welle that the book is intended as “a warning to future generations”.
Król’s plans have, nevertheless, proved controversial. The book was initially supposed to be published in cooperation with the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) in 2016. However, after protests by some scholars there, support for the project was withdrawn.
At the time, one historian at PAN, Andrzej Friszke, argued that the planned publication “testified to the fascistisation of life in Poland”, writes Rzeczpospolita. Król, however, disagrees.
He says that Mein Kampf is a historical source that “will help to discern the dangerous absurdities of Hitler’s programme to reconstruct the world, and to identify the points that marked the start of the road that led the National Socialists – and with them all of Germany – to crimes and extermination”.
The book is to be published by Bellona, a Warsaw-based publishing house that specialises in history. There are already some Polish versions of Mein Kampf available, notes Król, but they are “poorly translated from English” – rather than the original German – and “lack any critical apparatus”.
“For the first time, I am offering readers a book with the entire critical apparatus, including nearly 2,000 footnotes,” he tells Deutsche Welle. The 1000-page book will also include an introduction by Król of around 100 pages.
Król admits that many warned him not to go ahead. Some said he could face legal proceedings, given that promoting fascism is a criminal offense punishable by up to two years in prison (though there is an exception in the law for academic activity). Others told him that it was disrespectful to the memory of Hitler’s victims.
Poland – which was invaded by Nazi Germany on 1 September 1939, setting off the Second World War – suffered more deaths as a percentage of the population than any other country during the conflict. Around 6 million Polish citizens died – half of them Jews – representing roughly 17% of the prewar population.
But Król argues that understanding Mein Kampf helps act as a warning of how the “mechanisms of a democratic state can be dismantled and used to create the foundations of a totalitarian system”. He also believes that “treating it as a forbidden fruit creates a false myth” around the book.
In 2016, a similar “critical” version of Mein Kampf was published in Germany itself, after the copyright held by the Bavarian regional government expired 70 years from Hitler’s death. The book reached the top of the country’s bestseller list, and has so far sold over 100,000 copies.
Król says that he does not expect a similar situation to occur in Poland, though he does “hope there that there will be public discussion after the book is published” on 20 January.
Main image credit: Nick@/Flickr (under CC BY 2.0)
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
