Jewish leaders in Germany remain divided on whether or not to endorse the educational use of a new, annotated edition of Hitler's Mein Kampf due out in January.

When a teachers' organisation said last week that it hoped to use the scholarly edition in classrooms for pupils age 16 and up, the suggestion was met with firm opposition from Charlotte Knobloch, former head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, who was hidden by righteous gentiles in Germany during the war.

Ms Knobloch, speaking to the Handelsblatt newspaper last weekend, said that Hitler's hate-filled text should not see the light of day in any classroom until pupils have learned something about Judaism and about the rich history of Jews in Germany.

Jews should not be associated with the Holocaust alone, warned Ms Knobloch, who is head of the Jewish community of Munich and Bavaria.

The current head of the Central Council, Josef Schuster, recently said he did not oppose the use of the annotated Mein Kampf to teach about the origins and dangers of National Socialism.

But, this weekend, Berlin Chabad rabbi, Yehudah Teichtal, said he doubted whether the book could be employed "as a method of vaccination against extreme opinion. In my opinion, the proposal is irresponsible and dangerous".

The two-volume annotated edition was prepared and published for release in January by Munich's Institute for Contemporary History.