A first edition of Adolf Hitler’s autobiography “Mein Kampf.” Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Students at ten Italian high schools included Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s autobiography Mein Kampf in recently-compiled lists of their top ten favorite books, The Local reported on Thursday.

Italian Education Ministry official Alessandro Fusacchia was quoted as calling the students’ choice a “particularly nasty case.” According to Fusacchia, students had been asked to pick from books by Italian authors that were published after 2000.

“We are looking into it, but we are convinced that it was not a bad interpretation of the request, but rather a free choice,” he said.

Earlier this year, the Italian newspaper Il Giornale faced criticism after it distributed free copies of an annotated version of Mein Kampf.

As reported in The Algemeiner, a 2,000-page, two-volume annotated version of Mein Kampf was published in January by Munich’s Institute for Contemporary History after a 70-year copyright held by the German state of Bavaria expired. At the time, the institute said the new version “seeks to thoroughly deconstruct Hitler’s propaganda in a lasting manner.”