THE HAGUE, 05/11/08 - Education State Secretary Sharon Dijksma will instruct the Day of Respect organisation to inform schools throughout the country that they must not use the teaching material that compares the Party for Freedom's (PVV) leader, MP Geert Wilders, to Adolf Hitler.

In a booklet, entitled The Day of Respect Special 2008, schoolchildren aged 10 to 11 are told: "The film Fitna by Geert Wilders or the book Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler are based on one-sided ideas. Luckily there are also a whole lot of books, museums and plays that do show respect for people who think differently, believe differently or look different."

Dijksma yesterday said in the Lower House that the text was "unacceptable". She will order Corinne Bierman, director of The Day of Respect, to inform all schools that received the lesson material that it must not be used in its current form. Some 2,000 schools will have to be contacted.

"Clearly, a boundary has been crossed here", said Dijksma about the Hitler comparison. The full Lower House agreed with her. Dijksma had been called to the House by an enraged PVV MP Martin Bosma, who called Day for Respect a "leftist multiculti group".

The booklet was specially published for the Day of Respect, to take place on 14 November. A staff member of the Netherlands Debate Centre, which is involved in the project, discovered the Hitler comparison and tipped-off media. Bierman claimed she had "overlooked the text".

Fitna is the anti-Islam film that Wilders released on the internet on 27 March. The Public Prosecutor's Office (OM) concluded that the film did not constitute any violation of any law.