Auschwitz Museum protests CNN's using "Polish"
for German death camp visited by Kate and William
The Auschwitz Museum on the memorial site of the World War II Nazi-German death camp Auschwitz in south Poland has protested against the use of the term "Polish" in reference to German concentration camps on Polish territory by several news agencies.
The misnomer appeared, among others, in a CNN report on Tuesday's visit to the site of the former Stutthof concentration camp in north Poland by Britain's Prince and Princess of Cambridge. 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.
The Stutthof camp opened on September 2, 1939 near a town of the same name (today Sztutowo). Initially intended as a prison for the local Polish population, it was transformed into a concentration camp in 1942 and began to receive inmates from various parts of Europe.
An estimated 65,000 people perished in the camp, 28,000 of whom were of Jewish descent. According to historians, the camp's female population numbered around 46,000.
The Stutthof Museum opened in 1962 on an initiative by former inmates.
Since the beginning of this year Polish diplomatic missions worldwide have intervened in 40 cases of ascribing Nazi death camps on Polish territories to Poland.
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 Nazis 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 January 2017, just a week prior to the anniversary of the Auschwitz liberation, BBC posted to their official website an article pointing at Polish railway workers as accomplices in genocide. Later BBC amended the article and removed the untrue statements.
In March the expression 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 infamous expression was used by radio station B5 aktuell on its website in an article about a book on the Holocaust. After protests 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 21 April, 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 18 May the Polish consulate in Munich was forced to protest after a German history textbook appeared to 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 Nazi death camp Sobibor. The error was corrected upon intervention by a 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 forced 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.
The Auschwitz misnomer also appeared in Le Soir on a July 10's article about former EP head Simone Veil, who was an inmate of the camp during World War II.
After numerous protests 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.
Since the beginning of this year Polish diplomatic missions worldwide have intervened in 40 cases of ascribing Nazi death camps on Polish territories to Poland.
Also, in May 2012, then-US President Barack Obama 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). The White House later said Obama "misspoke" and expressed "regret".
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 (PAP)
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