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Shofar FTP Archive File: places//japan/hitler.book.01


Archive/File: fascism/japan hitler.book.01
Last-Modified: 1994/06/23

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                                HATIKVA
Volume 31.5                Am Yeshe Lev HaAretz         June 21, 1994
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                      JAPANESE BOOK PRAISES HITLER

   NEW YORK --The Simon Wiesenthal Center has expressed "alarm" and
   disgust" over a book written by a Japanese political party official
   that uses Adolf Hitler as a role model for political candidates.

   The book, "Hitler Election Strategy: A Bible for Certain Victory in
   Modern Elections," written by Yoshio Ogai, a public relations
   official in the Tokyo chapter of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party,
   says Hitler's manner of concentrating power provides very important
   teachings."

   The book lauds the Nazi leader for "unifying public opinion in a
   short period of time and snatching power."

   Ogai told The New York Times that his book was not an official
   party position, but his own personal advice to candidates in what
   he called these "chaotic" times.

   But he told the Times he had cleared the book with the secre-
   tary-general of the party's Tokyo branch.  The party, Japan's
   largest, controlled the government for nearly four decades until
   being ousted last summer.

   Ogai told the Times the book does not deal at all with Hitler's
   policies toward Jews.

   Ogai, who is 45 and said he has read books on Hitler since high
   school, added, "I think the racial issue is completely separate."
   He told the Times he did not understand why the book should raise
   concern or controversy.

   The book does not deal with the Holocaust or even the fact that
   Hitler was a dictator, the Times said.  But it describes itself as
   a "Bible for winning modern elections" and includes quotations from
   Hitler's "Mein Kampf"

   "It is almost beyond belief that such a work would be released as
   the civilized world pauses on the 50th anniversary of D-day to
   reflect on the horrors which Hitler's Germany and her Allies
   inflicted on the world," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the Wiesenthal
   Center's associate dean, in a statement.

   "The notion that any element of an important political party in any
   democracy would sanction and promote Nazi tactics poses a
   fundamental threat to that very democracy," Cooper said.



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