Polish court drops case against publisher of Hitler's Mein Kampf

A criminal case of a publisher charged with breaking copyright laws for publishing Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” was dropped by a regional court on Tuesday in Poland.

The Wroclaw regional court ruled that a publisher, identified only as Marek S., broke copyright law by printing 3,000 copies of the Polish translation of Mein Kampf, or "My Struggle," in 2005, PAP news agency reported.

Court officials were not immediately available to confirm the report.

Arguing that the harm caused by the small-scale publishing of the book was minimal - especially since Marek S. agreed in a 2005 civil trial to halt printing and withdraw the work from bookstores at his own cost - the court agreed to drop the case against the publisher for a probationary period of two years, PAP reported.

The German state of Bavaria holds the rights to the book, in which Hitler expressed his hatred of Jews and desire to conquer territory in Eastern Europe.

Marek S. originally said that he published the book to make a historical record available and also cited "a 1,000-year-old worry" among Poles about "the German dream of vast fertile lands and natural resources in the east."

Nazi Germany invaded Poland to start World War II, and subjected the country to a brutal occupation that cost millions of lives. The Nazis set up death camps in Poland as part of the Holocaust in which 6 million European Jews died.

"Mein Kampf" is banned from public display or sale in Germany, though it is available for historical research in libraries.