The American Jewish Committee is to sue the German arm of online books giant Amazon for selling more than 50 Holocaust denial books or books which "trivialise" the Nazis.

Deidre Berger, AJC's German director said: "It is unacceptable that books are for sale on Amazon.de that normally are only available under the counter in far-right extremist shops.

"We cannot let the spread of internet sales erode laws that ban Holocaust denial and incitement to hatred of minorities in Germany."

The organisation has filed a lawsuit with the state prosecutor in Munich to remove the books

The row centred on more than 50 works including publications from the extreme right-wing National Democratic Party of Germany plus other controversial authors like Udo Walendy, Germar Rudolf, Wilhelm Stäglich, Jürgen Graf and Carlo Mattogno.

German MP Sebastian Edathy of the Bundestag's interior affairs committee said the lawsuit had his full support.

He said: "It is shocking that an international book dealership is not prepared to remove books that stir up anti-Semitism and undermine the democratic consensus."

A spokeswoman for Amazon Germany told AFP the company had recently cracked down on books seemingly glorifying the Nazis.

She also suggested that removing all the books would be tantamount to censorship.

She said: "We think that the best response to questionable literature is not removing them but more discussion."