An exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on the history of the fabricated “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Photo: USHMM.

Switzerland’s Jewish community is taking legal action against a far right political grouping for publishing the antisemitic hoax, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

The latest edition of the “Protocols” — first fabricated more than a century ago by the secret police in Tsarist Russia — was published by the Swiss Nationalist Party (PNOS), a far right grouping that is active mainly in the German-speaking cantons of Switzerland.

The Swiss Federation of Jewish communities (SIG-FCSI) filed a complaint with the public prosecutor’s office of Bern Oberland after the publication was featured in the PNOS magazine “Harus.”

“Especially in times of the COVID-19 pandemic, conspiracy myths, including those with an antisemitic background, have once again gained popularity,” the SIG-FCSI declared in a statement.

“The publication of the ‘Protocols’ encourages such conspiracy myths and promotes Jew-hatred. That these are the goals of the PNOS is shown by the preface to the hoax: ‘Whether real or fake, we don’t need to worry, because we are mainly concerned with the content,'” the statement continued.

The PNOS was classified as an “extremist” group by the Swiss police in 2001.

Espousing a basic national socialist ideology, the party is not represented in any of Switzerland’s cantonal parliaments.

In May 2020, a leader of the PNOS, Thomas Steiger, was exposed by an anti-racist NGO for frequent violations of Swiss laws against racism. Steiger used his Facebook page to spread antisemitic propaganda, on one occasion telling a journalist that “Jews should be sterilized.”