A US publisher of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi manifesto announced its decision to donate all proceeds to a local organization that works directly with aging Holocaust survivors, according to a Boston Globe report.
The move comes after Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, a Boston-based publisher of one of the English translations of ‘Mein Kampf’, recently received criticism for donating its profits to organizations promoting tolerance that were not Holocaust-specific.
Andrew Russell, the publisher’s director of corporate social responsibility, welcomed the decision to focus on Holocaust-specific causes. “Our intention has always been for these funds to have a positive impact,” Russell said in a statement.
As a result, the publisher decided to give profits from the book — reportedly tens of thousands of dollars annually in past years — to Boston’s Jewish Family Children’s Services to support the charity’s Schechter Holocaust Services program.
Hitler’s controversial autobiography was a bestseller in Germany in the 1930s. After World War II, the local government of Bavaria, which owned the copyright, forbade its publication.
This year, a new edition of the Nazi dictator’s the book entered the public domain in Germany, and historians released an annotated version of the manifesto, which sold out immediately.