Poland reacts to Portuguese Auschwitz misnomer
On Wednesday, the Polish Embassy in Lisbon reacted to the use of the term "Auschwitz (Poland)" by a Portuguese daily in reference to the Auschwitz Nazi-German death camp in southern Poland. According to the embassy, the term falsely suggested the camp was Polish.
On Tuesday, local Portuguese daily "Diario de Coimbra" used the term in a report on a lecture on Auschwitz (see: NOTE 1) by Werner Reich, a 90-year-old survivor of the camp and one of the so-called "Birkenau Boys", a group of prisoners used for pseudo-medical experiments by the camp's notorious physician Josef Mengele.
In its account of Reich's lecture at Coimbra University, the daily wrote that Reich "testified to the atrocities experienced in Auschwitz (Poland), a concentration camp in which over a million deaths took place during World War II".
In a letter to the paper's editors, Polish Ambassador Jacek Junosza observed that the term "Auschwitz (Poland)" suggested the camp was Polish-built or Polish-run, which was misleading for readers, who were largely unaware that Poland was occupied by the Third Reich from 1939. Junosza remarked that the term carried the same negative connotations as the notorious tendency for international media to use the word "Polish" in reference to "German" death camps (see: NOTE 2), implying Polish responsibility for atrocities committed in German death camps on German-occupied Polish territory.
On Monday, Portugal's popular weekly "Expresso" corrected its own Auschwitz misnomer in a Saturday online report on the camp, in which it was described as "a death camp in Poland which operated from 1940 to 1945". Upon intervention by the Polish embassy, the weekly rephrased the sentence into, "a death camp operating in Nazi-German-occupied Poland from 1940 to 1945". (PAP)
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NOTE 1: The Auschwitz concentration camp was built by the Germans in 1940 as an incarceration site for Polish people, but soon began to receive transports of Jewish descendants from all over Europe. Enlarged by its Birkenau section in 1942, Auschwitz became the main site of the Jewish Holocaust. Germans killed at least 1.1 million people in the camp, including hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens, mainly of Jewish descent.
The camp's main gate with its prisoner-made Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Makes Free) sign is one of the camp's most recognisable elements. A Polish Jew named Dawid Wongczewski, who was deported from a prison in Wisnicz Nowy on June 20, 1940, is believed to have been the first fatal victim of the camp. He died on the night of July 6, 1940.
NOTE 2: Since the beginning of this year, Polish diplomatic missions worldwide have intervened in dozens of cases whereby German death camps were called "Polish".
The notorious misnomer "P.... death camps" suggests that the death camps in German-occupied Poland during World War II were built in the name of the Polish people rather than by the Nazi Germans for their own purposes.
Poland has launched an international campaign against the use of the false term notoriously employed by international mass media. One of the projects aimed to reach this goal was a "Death Camps Were Nazi German" mobile billboard campaign reminding the European public that World War Two death camps on German-occupied territory of Poland were Nazi-German and had nothing to do with "Polish".
In December 2016, the appellate court in Krakow (southern Poland) decided that Germany's ZDF was to make an apology on its website to former Auschwitz prisoner Karol Tendera who had sued the broadcaster over describing death camps Majdanek and Auschwitz as "Polish" in its 2013 online material.
As ZDF's online apology was considered too roundabout, and thus insufficient, upon the initiative of The Foundation for the Traditions of Town and Country a trailer-mounted billboard reading "Death Camps Were Nazi German" and "ZDF Apologize!" (showing an image of the main gate of the notorious Nazi-German death camp Auschwitz inscribed in the Adolf Hitler's face contour - PAP) toured Europe, stopping in Berlin, Wiesbaden ZDF broadcaster seat, Brussels EU institutions, London's BBC headquarters, Birmingham, Cambridge's student campus, Manchester and Southampton, among other locations.
In late July, German ZDF television declared that it had "repeatedly" apolgised "in a visible place" for using faulty references to World War II Nazi German death camps misidentifying them as "Polish". It made the statement after having appealed against the execution clause issued by a Mainz court in early February. Under the ruling, ZDF was to publish an apology on its main website.
In January 2017, just a week prior to the anniversary of the Auschwitz liberation, also BBC posted to their official website an article pointing to Polish railway workers as accomplices in genocide. Later BBC amended the article and removed the untrue statements.
In March, the false term was found on the German SWR television's web portal in a piece describing the first deportation of Jews from Mainz. The television has since corrected the mistake and apologised.
Also in March, the the misnomer was used by radio station B5 aktuell on its website in an article about a book on the Holocaust. After protests issued by the Polish consulate general, the expression was replaced with "German National-Socialist extermination camps (...) in then occupied Poland".
In April, a Bavarian daily, Mittelbayerische Zeitung, used the erroneous expression attributing German-Nazi death camps to Poland on its website.
On April 21, the Polish embassy in Madrid made an official protest after two regional newspapers in the Basque Country, an autonomous community in northern Spain, instead of calling Auschwitz a "Nazi German concentration camp" called it "Polish".
On May 18, the Polish consulate in Munich was forced to file a protest after a German history textbook appeared to also misidentify German Nazi death camps in German-occupied Poland as "Polish".
On June 1, after the intervention of Polish embassy in Madrid Spanish El Pais was forced to correct the notorious misnomer, replacing the word "Polish" in the sentence describing the camp with "German (camp) in occupied Poland".
The German daily Badische Zeitung in a June 14 article on an exhibition of works by Jewish artist Otto Freundlich used the adjective "Polish" with reference to the German death camp Sobibor as well. The error was corrected upon intervention by the Polish consul. The paper replaced the erroneous version with the following sentence: "In 1943 Otto Freundlich was killed in the National Socialist death camp Sobibor on the territory of then-occupied Poland".
On June 20, the Polish embassy in Italy was compelled to lodge official protests with two Italian television broadcasters, who used the adjective “Polish” in the context of the German death camp in Auschwitz. The false expression was used on the websites of both broadcasters, in reports about the visit of young Italian footballers, who take part in the Under-21 European Championsips in Poland, in the former German Nazi death camp. Following the Polish embassy’s complaints to the broadcasters’ management, both RAI Sport and Mediaset rectified their mistakes, calling Auschwitz "a Nazi death camp" instead, and issuing apologies.
In July, after a protest filed by the Polish Embassy in Brussels, the Belgian daily Het laatste Nieuws has replaced the word "Polish" in reference to the Nazi-German death camp Auschwitz with a statement "the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland".
The Auschwitz misnomer appeared in a July article referring to the theft of an exhibit from Auschwitz. Polish Ambassador Artur Orzechowski intervened in the matter, in effect of which Het laatste Nieuws corrected the faulty statement.
On July 10, the notorious Auschwitz misnomer appeared in another Belgian publication, namely, Le Soir's article about former EP head Simone Veil, who was an inmate of the camp during World War II.
Also in this case, after numerous protests having been filed by the Polish Embassy in Brussels, the Belgian daily withdrew the word "Polish" it applied in reference to the Nazi-German death camp Auschwitz
A real spurt of news containing references to German death camps as "Polish" took place after July's visit to Stutthof concentration camp by Britain's Prince and Princess of Cambridge.
The misnomer appeared, among others, on a CNN scroll during July 18's report on Kate and William's visit to Poland. It was also used by USA TODAY and the British dailies Daily Mirror and Daily Mail.
After the protest, in which the Auschwitz Museum reminded that Stutthof was a Nazi-German concentration camp, several news agencies corrected the phrase.
A few years back, then-US President Barack Obama in May 2012 also referred to a "Polish" instead of a "German death camp" when honouring a Polish war hero and one of Polish Holocaust whistleblowers, Jan Karski (see: NOTE 3). The White House later said Obama "misspoke" and expressed "regret".
In order to help avoid such misstatements, in January 2017, the Polish Embassy in Washington put online the "Words Matter" video that stresses the use of the right terminology with reference to "Nazi German concentration and exterminations camps".
In one minute and forty-three seconds, the animated educational video presents a thorough account of Nazi German occupation of Poland during WWII, showing who the true perpetrators in the Holocaust were.
In a deep, stern baritone, the narrator reminds that "words matter". "Using misleading language obscures the tragedy of millions of Holocaust victims. It's not just semantics, it's a matter of historical integrity and accuracy. Remember to use correct words: GERMAN NAZI CAMPS", the voice-over adds emphatically.
The video is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDpTcXQ8Na0&feature=youtu.be
NOTE 3: Jan Karski, birth name Jan Kozielewski, along with Witold Pilecki (see: NOTE 4), was the most renowned Holocaust whistleblower. As a young Polish Roman Catholic diplomat, during the early days of World War II, he witnessed first-hand the German Nazis' treatment of fellow citizens of Jewish descent in ghettos and concentration camps.
To learn the fate of Polish Jews, Karski was smuggled into the Warsaw ghetto by the Jewish underground and to the Belzec death camp in the disguise of a Ukrainian guard. He travelled across occupied Europe to England, and eventually to America. Karski personally reported to the Polish Prime Minister in London, General Wladyslaw Sikorski, Britain's Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, US President Franklin Roosevelt and many other prominent figures. His description of the systematic annihilation of European Jews was met with disbelief and passivity.
After having been given by Karski a recount of German death camp atrocities, then American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was quoted as asking the Polish messenger about "the situation in the Polish countryside", and how it was in Poland with... "the horses and cattle".
Karski remained in Washington, D.C. after the war, became an American citizen and taught at Georgetown University for nearly 40 years. He died in 2000.
He was decorated with Israel's Righteous Among the Nations medal (see: NOTE 5) and the Order of the White Eagle, the highest Polish distinction. Karski, widely regarded as the "man who tried to stop the Holocaust," was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian state distinction in the United States, by President Barack Obama.
During the fateful ceremony (30 May, 2012 - PAP) Obama in his address, while referring to German death camps, applied the term "Polish", for which misnomer he later apologised profusely.
NOTE 4: Witold Pilecki was a Polish soldier and rotamaster in the pre-war Polish cavalry. In German-occupied Poland he founded the Secret Polish Army resistance group in November 1939, subsequently joining the 1942-formed underground Home Army.
Pilecki, called "the bravest of the brave" was the author of the so-called Witold's Report - the first comprehensive account of proceedings in the German Auschwitz concentration camp and the Holocaust overall.
During World War Two, Pilecki volunteered for a resistance operation to get himself imprisoned in the Auschwitz death camp, where he planned to gather intelligence, help inmates and escape. At Auschwitz, Pilecki organized a resistance movement and, as early as 1941, started informing the Western Allies about atrocities taking place in the camp.
In the night from April 26 to 27 1943, after 2,5 years of imprisonment, Pilecki and two companions made a daring escape from the Auschwitz camp, whereupon Pilecki got in touch with the Home Army in Krakow (south Poland) and presented a detailed report on horror of mass extermination taking place in Auschwitz. Unfortunately, his plan of freeing the Auschwitz prisoners was not accepted in the face of German forces' dominating strength as well as passivity of the Allied side.
In 1944 Pilecki fought in the Warsaw Uprising against the Germans.
He remained loyal to the London-based Polish exile government after the communist takeover of Poland, and on May 8, 1947, was arrested on charges of working for "foreign imperialism" and after a show trial sentenced to death.
He was executed by a gunshot to the back of the head on 25 May 1948 in the basement of infamous Warsaw Mokotow prison. His body was most probably dumped into a nameless grave and has yet to be found. Information about his activities and fate was suppressed by the Polish communist regime until 1989.
As Pilecki's burial site remains unknown, he is among the communist regime victims whose remains are currently sought in countrywide exhumations by Poland's National Remembrance Institute (IPN).
Witold's Report, considered the world's first comprehensive intel on the Holocaust, was presented at the last International Book Fair in London, promoting Poland's "bravest of the brave" among both compatriots (with the support of the Polish Institute and the Polish Social and Cultural Centre), as well as foreigners at the fair in Olympia.
Pilecki was posthumously awarded Poland's highest decoration, the Order of the White Eagle, by late President Lech Kaczynski, and later promoted to the rank of Colonel.
NOTE 5: The Righteous Among the Nations distinction is awarded by the Jerusalem-based Yad Vashem Institute, Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. Most trees planted at Yad Vashem to commemorate those who saved Jews during the war are dedicated to Polish people. In all, out of 26,000 Righteous Among the Nations worldwide, more than 6,700 come from Poland. (PAP)
