Melville House Books

A Polish publisher who published extracts of Adolf Hitler‘s Mein Kampf without the permission of the copyright holder — the German state of Bavaria — has been convicted of copyright infringement and sentenced to three months in prison and a fine of €2,271 ($3,178).

According to an Agence France Presse wire report appearing on the Expatica site, Polish news reports are only identifying the publisher as “Marek S.” of the publishing house “XXL.” The report says Bavarian authorities first brought the charges in 2005 but a Polish court dropped charges when the publisher withdrew the book from stores and destroyed all copies — some 20,000 books.

The report doesn’t explain how the charges came to be reinstated, but it does note that Bavaria “keeps a close guard on the book’s copright in an effort to smother attempts to rehabilitate Nazism and have regularly brought cases against publishers.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.