Some leading members of the Jewish community in Britain spoke of their anger today at a decision to auction an anti-Semitic document which has been locked away for nearly 100 years.
There were fears the controversial manuscript, which claims Jews engaged in human sacrifice, could be used to inflame neo-Nazi hatred.
The Jewish Board of Deputies is to sell the manuscript - "Human sacrifice among the Sephardine or Eastern Jews" - which it once said should never be seen in public.
The paper was written by the Victorian explorer and diplomat Sir Richard Burton, who also translated the Kama Sutra, and has never been published.
It is due to be auctioned at Christie's auction house in London on Wednesday and is expected to fetch at least £150,000.
Lord Greville Janner, a former President of both the Board of Deputies and of the Holocaust Educational Trust, urged the Board to reconsider.
He told BBC Radio 4's Sunday programme: "It's immoral to propagate pornography and I regard this vicious Nazi document as worse than pornography."
The Board said the sale was partly because of financial pressure but also because there was no reason to keep the manuscript locked away. It believes enough time has gone by for it to be seen as a historical document rather than a dangerous polemic.
The Board's Director Mr Neville Nagler told the Sunday programme: "The view taken by the current trustees is that there is no reason not to make the document available to genuine Burton scholars, or anybody with an interest in his writings."
The manuscript was written after Mr Burton had worked as a diplomat in Damascus.
It focused on the 1840 disappearance of a Capuchin friar and the arrest of 13 Jews who were accused of ritual murder but later acquitted.In her will Mr Burton's widow Isabel asked for it and other papers to be destroyed to protect his reputation.
The manuscript survived and came into the hands of the Board in 1909 when it was hidden away.
PA