Death Camps Were Nazi German action reaches Berlin

Poland's Death Camps Were Nazi German mobile billboard reminding European public opinion that World War Two death camps on Polish territory were Nazi-German and not Polish, reached Berlin Wednesday.

Fot. EPA/JOERG HALISCH / A car pulling a billboard with the inscription 'Death Camps Were Nazi German' drives in circles in front of German TV broadcaster ZDF in Mainz, Germany, 02 February 2017. The action is a part of the ongoing web campaign #GermanDeathCamps, aiming to force ZDF to apologize to Polish former Auschwitz prisoner Karol Tendera for using the phrase 'Polish death camps Majdanek and Auschwitz', who won a trial against ZDF at a Polish court in December 2016. Fot. EPA/JOERG HALISCH

The project is part of an effort aimed against the "Polish death camps" term notoriously used by international media.

The trailer-mounted billboard showing an image of the main gate of the notorious Nazi-German death camp Auschwitz with a motif relating to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, will be located in Berlin's Tiergarten park between two symbolic sites, the Brandenburg Gate and the Berlin Victory Column.

The billboard also carries the inscriptions "Death Camps Were Nazi German" and "ZDF apologise", the latter referring to the German TV station's 2016 defeat in proceedings before a Polish court over its use of the term "Polish concentration camps" in relation to the Auschwitz camp and Majdanek, another Polish-sited Nazi-German death camp.

In December 2016, an appellate court in Krakow, south Poland ruled that ZDF was to make a proper apology on its website to former Auschwitz prisoner Karol Tendera for its use of the phrase "Polish death camps Majdanek and Auschwitz".

According to the billboard action organisers, the station apologised to Tendera as ordained, but did it in an unsatisfactory, "roundabout" manner.

Before parking in the Tiergarten park the trailer with the billboard crossed Berlin's Unter den Linden avenue, where the ZDF headquarters are located.

Its earlier stops included ZDF headquarters in Wiesbaden, Deutsche Welle's offices in Bonn and the vicinity of EU institutions in Brussels as well as BBC headquarters in London and Cambridge student campus.

Earlier in February, after the intervention of the Polish Embassy in the wake of BBC-promulugated suggestions that the Polish railway workers supervised the transports to the Nazi German Auschwitz and so share responsibility for the Holocaust, BBC removed groundless statement from its website. BBC explained the deletion of the false reference to the Polish railwaymen by acknowledging "they were in fact forced to work during the German occupation of Poland".

The billboard vistited London twice on its way. On the second leg it made a stop at the front of the parliament and the Big Ben.

The idea of a billboard mounted on a trailer towed by a car was conceived, among others, by the Foundation for the Traditions of Town and Country. The car set off from Wroclaw, western Poland, in late January.

The car set off from Wroclaw, south of Poland at the end of January. (PAP)

mb/