Publisher arrested for remembering Hitler

“Forgive and forget,” say authorities, “but definitely forget.”

2000-06-03 09:30:18 Announcing that “no publisher has the right to incite hate crimes, even against dead madmen,” Czech police arrested publisher Michal Zitko for publishing Mein Kampf and calling it a “monstrous ideology”. “This just recalls old wounds,” said a police spokesperson, who advised the Czech people to “forgive and forget”, and emphasized that if they can’t forgive, “they must still forget”.

The Czech prosecutor in charge of the case decried Zitko’s language in describing “Mein Kampf”, and issued a call for racial harmony. “We wish minorities and Nazis could just get along,” said the prosecutor, “and we think it is more likely to happen if minorities don’t know what the Nazis have said about them.”

A spokeswoman for the Czech government said that keeping Hitler’s work in print could delay the kinds of social reform they’re working towards. “We may wish to institute similar policies in the future,” said the spokeswoman. “And we don’t want to be inhibited by unfortunate incidences in the far past.” The Czech government said they were considering banning all historical documents more than forty years old. “Having actual historical documents available makes it very hard for socially responsible teachers to write friendlier, more politically accurate history textbooks,” said the government spokeswoman.

The Czech police agreed, and said that they might have some social reform of their own in mind. “History is going to repeat itself whether people remember it or not,” said one ranking police officer, “but we feel it will be more of a pleasant surprise if they don’t remember.”

Shaheen Hamedi