Polish death camps - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Polish death camp and Polish concentration camp are terms that occasionally appear in international media

News media

The news media are those elements of the mass media that focus on delivering news to the general public or a target public.These include print media , broadcast news , and more recently the Internet .-Etymology:A medium is a carrier of something...

in reference to Nazi German concentration camps

Nazi concentration camps

Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...

built and run by during the Holocaust

The Holocaust

The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...

in the General Government

General Government

The General Government was an area of Second Republic of Poland under Nazi German rule during World War II; designated as a separate region of the Third Reich between 1939–1945...

and other parts of occupied Poland. Usage of the term has been condemned as insulting by the Polish foreign minister Adam Daniel Rotfeld

Adam Daniel Rotfeld

Adam Daniel Rotfeld is a Polish researcher, diplomat, and former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland from 5 January 2005 until 31 October 2005 when a change of government took place. He served earlier as the deputy foreign minister...

in 2005, who also alleged that it—intentionally or unintentionally—shifted the responsibility for the construction or operation of the camps from the German to the Polish people. Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita
Rzeczpospolita (newspaper)
Rzeczpospolita is a Polish national daily newspaper, with a circulation around of 160,000. Issued every day except Sunday. Rzeczpospolita was printed in broadsheet format, then switched to compact at October 16, 2007...

has criticized international media outlets, including Haaretz
Haaretz
Haaretz is Israel's oldest daily newspaper. It was founded in 1918 and is now published in both Hebrew and English in Berliner format. The English edition is published and sold together with the International Herald Tribune. Both Hebrew and English editions can be read on the Internet...

from Israel, as "holocaust deniers

Holocaust denial

Holocaust denial is the act of denying the genocide of Jews in World War II, usually referred to as the Holocaust. The key claims of Holocaust denial are: the German Nazi government had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews, Nazi authorities did not use extermination camps and gas...

" over usage of the term. However, all foreign media articles so criticized by Rzeczpospolita (as of November 2008) make clear that the perpetrators were German, none claims Poles built the camps.

Opponents of these terms argue that they are inaccurate, as they may imply that the camps—located in Nazi-occupied Poland—might have been a responsibility of the Poles (i.e. Polish), when in fact they were designed, constructed and run by Nazi Germany with no collaboration from Poland or Poles; and, used to exterminate millions of Polish Gentiles alongside Polish Jews, including Jews transported by the Nazis from across Europe. Non-Polish media also make similar references to the German-run extermination program in Nazi-occupied Poland such as the "Polish Ghetto", "Polish Holocaust", "Nazi Poland", etc. Polish Foreign Minister Adam Daniel Rotfeld

Adam Daniel Rotfeld

in 2005 suggested that there are instances of "bad will, saying that under the pretext that “it’s only a geographic reference”, attempts are made to distort history and conceal the truth."

An example of the controversy occurred when an April 30, 2004 CTV News

CTV television network

CTV Television Network is a Canadian English language television network and is owned by Bell Media. It is Canada's largest privately-owned network, and has consistently placed as Canada's top-rated network in total viewers and in key demographics since 2002, after several years trailing the rival...

report made reference to "the Polish camp in Treblinka

Treblinka extermination camp

Treblinka was a Nazi extermination camp in occupied Poland during World War II near the village of Treblinka in the modern-day Masovian Voivodeship of Poland. The camp, which was constructed as part of Operation Reinhard, operated between and ,. During this time, approximately 850,000 men, women...

". The Polish embassy in Canada lodged a complaint with CTV. Robert Hurst of CTV, however, argued that the term "Polish" was used throughout North America in a geographical sense, and declined to issue a correction. The Polish Ambassador to Ottawa then complained to the National Specialty Services Panel of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council

Canadian Broadcast Standards Council

The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council is an independent, non-governmental organization created by the Canadian Association of Broadcasters to administer standards established by its members, Canada's private broadcasters....

. The Council did not accept Hurst's argument and ruled that the word "'Polish'—similarly to such adjectives as 'English', 'French' and 'German'—had connotations that clearly extended beyond geographic context. Its use with reference to Nazi extermination camps was misleading and improper".

Concerns about the use of the term Polish death camp led the Polish government to request that UNESCO

UNESCO

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...

change the official name of Auschwitz from "Auschwitz Concentration Camp

Auschwitz concentration camp

Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...

" to "former Nazi German concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau" in order to make clearer that the concentration camp was built and operated by Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

. On 28 June 2007 at its meeting in Christchurch

Christchurch

Christchurch is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the country's second-largest urban area after Auckland. It lies one third of the way down the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula which itself, since 2006, lies within the formal limits of...

, New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

, the World Heritage Committee

World Heritage Committee

The World Heritage Committee establishes the sites to be listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. It is responsible for the implementation of the World Heritage Convention, defines the use of the World Heritage Fund and allocates financial assistance upon requests from States Parties...

of UNESCO changed the name of the camp to "Auschwitz Birkenau. German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945)." Previously, some media, including Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...

in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, had called the camp "Polish". The New York Times regularly refers to Auschwitz as Polish rather than German.

The use of terms explicitly mentioning "Poland" or "Polish" has been monitored and discouraged by the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Polonia

Polonia

The Polish diaspora refers to people of Polish origin who live outside Poland. The Polish diaspora is also known in modern Polish language as Polonia, which is the name for Poland in Latin and in many other Romance languages....

organizations around the world as well as by all Polish governments since 1989. The American Jewish Committee

American Jewish Committee

The American Jewish Committee was "founded in 1906 with the aim of rallying all sections of American Jewry to defend the rights of Jews all over the world...

has also rejected the usage, stating that:
The government of Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

has also deprecated the usage of this phrase.

In 2008, due to the continued usage of the term term Polish in regards to atrocities committed and camps built and operated by the German state under Nazi leadership, the chairman of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) issued a letter to local administrations with a call to add German before Nazi in all monuments and tables that commemorate the victims of Nazi Germany. As stated by the IPN official, while in Poland 'Nazi' is definitely connected to 'German' this is not the case everywhere in the world, and the change will help avoid any misinterpretation that the responsibility for the crimes against humanity committed in war-torn Poland wasn't specifically German. At the time several places of martyrology underwent renovations, and the new plaque

Plaque

Plaque or placque may refer to:* Commemorative plaque, a flat ornamental plate or tablet fixed to a wall, used to mark a significant event, person, etc.* Memorial Plaque, issued to next-of-kin of dead British military personnel after World War I...

s were to make clear that the nationality of the people responsible for attrocities was not only German, but also Soviet Russian. The incorrect phrase Polish concentration camps is used in school textbooks outside Poland to refer to the Nazi German concentration camps on occupied Polish territory.

On December 23, 2009, writing in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

, Timothy Garton Ash

Timothy Garton Ash

Timothy Garton Ash is a British historian, author and commentator. He is currently serving as Professor of European Studies at Oxford University. Much of his work has been concerned with the late modern and contemporary history of Central and Eastern Europe...

said:

Watching a German television news report on the trial of John Demjanjuk
John Demjanjuk
John Demjanjuk is a retired Ukrainian-American auto worker who gained notoriety after being accused numerous times of Holocaust-related war crimes....

a few weeks ago, I was amazed to hear the announcer describe him as a guard in "the Polish extermination camp Sobibor". What times are these, when one of the main German TV channels thinks it can describe Nazi camps as "Polish"? In my experience, the automatic equation of Poland with Catholicism, nationalism and antisemitism – and thence a slide to guilt by association with the Holocaust – is still widespread. This collective stereotyping does no justice to the historical record.

In 2009 Zbigniew Osewski, grandson of a Stutthof

Stutthof concentration camp

Stutthof was the first Nazi concentration camp built outside of 1937 German borders.Completed on September 2, 1939, it was located in a secluded, wet, and wooded area west of the small town of Sztutowo . The town is located in the former territory of the Free City of Danzig, 34 km east of...

prisoner, announced he was suing Axel Springer AG

Axel Springer AG

Axel Springer AG is one of the largest multimedia companies in Europe, with more than 11,500 employees and with annual revenues of about €2.9 billion. The Company is active in a total of 36 countries, including Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Russia and Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland...

for calling Majdanek a 'former Polish concentration camp' in article from November 2008 published in German press "Die Welt

Die Welt

Die Welt is a German national daily newspaper published by the Axel Springer AG company.It was founded in Hamburg in 1946 by the British occupying forces, aiming to provide a "quality newspaper" modelled on The Times...

". In 2010, The Polish-American Kosciuszko Foundation

Kosciuszko Foundation

Kosciuszko Foundation is a charitable foundation based in New York City. It was created by Stephen Mizwa to fund programs that promote Polish-American intellectual and artistic exchange.-History:...

launched a petition demanding that four major U.S. news organizations endorse the use of the term “German concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Poland”.

"Globe and Mail" informed on September 23, 2011 about “Polish concentration camps”. Canadian MP Ted Opitz

Ted Opitz

Ted Opitz, CD is a Canadian politician, who was elected to the Canadian House of Commons in the 2011 election. He represents the electoral district of Etobicoke Centre as a member of the Conservative Party....

and Minister of Citizenship

Minister of Citizenship and Immigration (Canada)

The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration is the Minister of the Crown in the Canadian Cabinet who is responsible for overseeing the federal government department responsible for immigration, refugee and citizenship issues, Citizenship and Immigration Canada...

Jason Kenney

Jason T. Kenney, PC, MP is Canada's current Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism. He has represented the riding of Calgary Southeast in the Canadian House of Commons since 1997....

supported Polish protests .
Amazon offers Inside Hana's Suitcase DVD as a story about a suitcase from the notorious Polish death camp, Auschwitz , the same phrase is present on the first page of Student Reference of the movie, the word Germany on the last page.

External links

Polish minister's speeches on the phenomenon
Appeal against "Polish death camps" in Rzeczpospolita
Rzeczpospolita (newspaper)
Rzeczpospolita is a Polish national daily newspaper, with a circulation around of 160,000. Issued every day except Sunday. Rzeczpospolita was printed in broadsheet format, then switched to compact at October 16, 2007...
Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Against "Polish Camps"
Article on Irena Sendler but discusses issue of calling German camps as Polish
Article on history of Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland but discusses issue of calling German camps as Polish
Linguistic imprecision? (anti-Polish bias in the English-language media)
Article which discusses irresponsible accusation against Poland including reference to German death camps as "Polish" death camps.
Punishment for “slandering Polish nation” unconstitutional Report of the Polish ministry on foreign usage of "Polish death camp" argument

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See also

External links