In historical discussions ofWorld War II, "Polish death camp" and "Polish concentration camp" are ambiguous expressions which, while accurately describing camps located in Poland, are misconstruable as indicating that there wereNazi concentration andextermination camps—established byNazi Germany inGerman-occupied Poland during World War II—established or operated by Poles or by Poland.[1][2][3][4]
Some Poles, including politicians, have viewed use of the expressions "Polish death camp" and "Polish concentration camp", by careless speakers, as having been deliberately intended todisinform.[5]
Poland's subsequent 2018Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance prompted objections within and outside Poland. The law criminalized public statements ascribing, to the Polish nation, responsibility inHolocaust-related crimes,crimes against peace,crimes against humanity, orwar crimes, or which "grossly reduce the responsibility of the actual perpetrators".[6] It was generally understood that the law criminalized use of the expressions "Polish death camp" and "Polish concentration camp".[7][8][9]
The amendment also prohibited use of the expression "Polish concentration camp" in reference to camps operated by the Polish government after World War II on sites of former Nazi camps.[10] In a January 2018 trial,Newsweek.pl was sentenced for referring to theZgoda camp, operated by Polish authorities between February and November 1945, as a "Polish concentration camp".[11][12]
In 2019 Poland'sConstitutional Tribunal ruled that the portions of the amendment relating to the expressions "Ukrainian nationalists" and "Eastern Lesser Poland" were null and void.[13]
During World War II, three million Polish Jews (90% of the prewar Polish-Jewish population) were killed due to Nazi German genocidal action. At least 2.5 million non-Jewish Polish civilians and soldiers perished.[14] One million non-Polish Jews were also forcibly transported by the Nazis and killed in German-occupied Poland.[15] At least half of 140,000 ethnic Poles deported died in theAuschwitz camp alone.[16]
After theGerman invasion, Poland, in contrast to cases such asVichy France, experienced direct German administration rather than an indigenous puppet government.[17][18]
The western part of prewarPoland wasannexed outright by Germany.[19] Some Poles wereexpelled from the annexed lands to make room for German settlers.[20] Parts of eastern Poland became part of theReichskommissariat Ukraine andReichskommissariat Ostland. The rest of German-occupied Poland, dubbed by Germany theGeneral Government, was administered by Germany as occupied territory. TheGeneral Government received nointernational recognition. It is estimated that the Germanskilled more than 2 million non-Jewish Polish civilians. Nazi German planners called for "the complete destruction" of all Poles, and their fate, as well as that of many otherSlavs, was outlined in a genocidalGeneralplan Ost (General Plan East).[21]
Historians have generally stated that relatively fewPoles collaborated with Nazi Germany, in comparison with the situations in other German-occupied countries.[17][18][22] ThePolish Underground judicially condemned and executed collaborators,[23][24][25] and thePolish Government-in-Exile coordinated resistance to the German occupation, including help for Poland's Jews.[14]
Some Poles were complicit in, or indifferent to, the rounding up of Jews. There are reports of neighbors turning Jews over to the Germans or blackmailing them (see "szmalcownik"). In some cases, Poles themselves killed their Jewish fellow citizens, the most notorious examples being the 1941Jedwabne pogrom and the 1946Kielce pogrom, the latter taking place after the German occupation had ended.[26][27][9]
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However, many Poles risked their lives to hide and assist Jews. Poles were sometimes exposed by Jews they were helping, if the Jews were found by the Germans—resulting in the murder of entire Polish rescue networks.[28] Possibly a million Poles aided Jews;[29] some estimates run as high as three million helpers.[30] Poles have the world's highest count of individuals who have been recognized byIsrael'sYad Vashem asRighteous among the Nations — non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from extermination during the Holocaust.[31]
Defenders argue that the expression "Polish death camps" refers strictly to the location of the Nazi death camps and does not indicate involvement by the Polish government in France or, later, in the United Kingdom.[32] Some international politicians and news agencies have apologized for using the term, notablyBarack Obama in 2012.[33]CTV Television Network News President Robert Hurst defended CTV's usage (see§ Mass media) as it "merely denoted geographic location", but the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council ruled against it, declaring CTV's use of the term to be unethical.[32] Others have not apologized, saying that it is a fact thatAuschwitz,Treblinka,Majdanek,Chełmno,Bełżec, andSobibór were situated in German-occupied Poland.[citation needed]
Commenting upon the 2018 bill criminalizing such expressions (see§ Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance), Israeli politician (and later Prime Minister)Yair Lapid justified the expression "Polish death camps" with the argument that "hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered without ever meeting a German soldier".[34] In response, theAuschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum released a statement calling Lapid's claims a "conscious lie" and accusing him of "using Holocaust as a political game", and likening his allegation to the claims made byHolocaust deniers.[35][36]
Opponents of the use of these expressions argue that they are inaccurate, as they may suggest that the camps were a responsibility of the Poles, when in fact they were designed, constructed, and operated by the Germans and were used to exterminate both non-Jewish Poles and Polish Jews, as well as Jews transported to the camps by the Germans from across Europe.[37][38] HistorianGeneviève Zubrzycki and theAnti-Defamation League (ADL) have called the expression a misnomer.[2][3] It has also been described as "misleading" byThe Washington Post editorial board,[39]The New York Times,[40] the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council,[32] and Nazi hunter Dr.Efraim Zuroff.[27] Holocaust memorialYad Vashem described it as a "historical misrepresentation",[41] and White House spokesmanTommy Vietor referred to its use a "misstatement".[42]
Abraham Foxman of the ADL described the strict geographical defence of the terms as "sloppiness of language", and "dead wrong, highly unfair to Poland".[26] Polish Minister of Foreign AffairsAdam Daniel Rotfeld said in 2005 that "Under the pretext that 'it's only a geographic reference', attempts are made to distort history".[43]
As early as 1944, the expression "Polish death camp" appeared as the title of aCollier's magazine article, entitled "Polish Death Camp". This was an excerpt from thePolish resistance fighterJan Karski's 1944 memoir,Courier from Poland: The Story of a Secret State (reprinted in 2010 asStory of a Secret State: My Report to the World). Karski himself, in both the book and the article, had used the expression "Jewish death camp", not "Polish death camp".[44][45] As shown in 2019, theCollier's editor changed the title of Karski's article typescript, "In the Belzec Death Camp", to "Polish Death Camp".[46][47][48]
Other early-postwar, 1945 uses of the expression "Polish death camp" occurred in the periodicalsContemporary Jewish Record,[49]The Jewish Veteran,[50] andThe Palestine Yearbook and Israeli Annual,[51] as well as in a 1947 book,Beyond the Last Path, by Hungarian-born Jew and Belgian resistance fighter Eugene Weinstock[52] and in Polish writerZofia Nałkowska's 1947 book,Medallions.[53]
A 2016 article by Matt Lebovic stated that West Germany'sAgency 114, which during theCold War recruited former Nazis toWest Germany's intelligence service, worked to popularize the term "Polish death camps" in order to minimize German responsibility for, and implicate Poles in, the atrocities.[54][better source needed]
On 30 April 2004 aCanadian Television (CTV) Network News report referred to "the Polish camp in Treblinka". 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.[55] The Polish Ambassador to Ottawa then complained to the National Specialty Services Panel of theCanadian Broadcast Standards Council. The Council rejected Hurst's argument, ruling 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."[32]
In November 2008, the German newspaperDie Welt called Majdanek concentration camp a "former Polish concentration camp" in an article; it immediately apologized when this was pointed out.[56] In 2009, Zbigniew Osewski, grandson of aStutthof concentration camp prisoner, suedAxel Springer AG.[57] The case started in 2012;[58] in 2015, the case was dismissed by Warsaw district court.[56]
In the 16 November 2009 edition ofMaclean's magazine, the journalist Kathie Engelhart in an article aboutJohn Demjanjuk called him a man who had been mistaken for "a notorious sadist at Poland's Treblinka death camp", spoke about " "Poland's Treblinka death camp", and stated that Demjanjuk had "served at three Polish camps" as a guard.[59] Engelhart's article led to a formal complaint fromPiotr Ogrodziński, the Polish ambassador in Ottawa, who stated: "It's absolutely false that Poles had anything to do with concentration camps, with the exception that they were the first prisoners".[59]
On 23 December 2009, historianTimothy Garton Ash wrote inThe Guardian: "Watching a German television news report on the trial ofJohn Demjanjuk 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 mainGerman 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."[60]
In 2010 the Polish-AmericanKosciuszko Foundation launched a petition demanding that four major U.S. news organizations endorse use of the expression "German concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Poland".[61][62]
Canada'sGlobe and Mail reported on 23 September 2011 about "Polish concentration camps". Canadian Member of ParliamentTed Opitz andMinister of Citizenship and ImmigrationJason Kenney supported Polish protests.[63]
In 2013 Karol Tendera, who had been a prisoner at Auschwitz-Birkenau and is secretary of an association of former prisoners of German concentration camps, sued the German television networkZDF, demanding a formal apology and 50,000zlotys, to be donated to charitable causes, for ZDF's use of the expression "Polish concentration camps".[64] ZDF was ordered by the court to make a public apology.[65] Some Poles felt the apology to be inadequate and protested with a truck bearing a banner that read "Death camps were Nazi German - ZDF apologize!" They planned to take their protest against the expression "Polish concentration camps" 1,600 kilometers across Europe, fromWrocław in Poland toCambridge, England, via Belgium and Germany, with a stop in front of ZDF headquarters inMainz.[66]
The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage recommends against using the expression,[67][68] as does theAP Stylebook,[69] and that ofThe Washington Post.[39] However, the 2018 Polish bill has been condemned by the editorial boards ofThe Washington Post[39] andThe New York Times.[40]
In May 2012 U.S. PresidentBarack Obama referred to a "Polish death camp" while posthumously awarding thePresidential Medal of Freedom toJan Karski. After complaints from Poles, including Polish Foreign MinisterRadosław Sikorski andAlex Storozynski, President of theKosciuszko Foundation, an Obama administration spokesperson said the President had misspoken when "referring to Nazi death camps in German-occupied Poland."[70][71] On 31 May 2012 President Obama wrote a letter to Polish President Komorowski in which he explained that he used this phrase inadvertently in reference to "a Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland" and further stated: "I regret the error and agree that this moment is an opportunity to ensure that this and future generations know the truth."[72]
ThePolish government andPolish diaspora organizations have denounced the use of such expressions that include the words "Poland" or "Polish". ThePolish Ministry of Foreign Affairs monitors the use of such expressions and seeks corrections and apologies if they are used.[73] In 2005, Poland's Jewish[74] Foreign MinisterAdam Daniel Rotfeld remarked upon 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."[43][75] He has stated that use of the adjective "Polish" in reference to concentration camps or ghettos, or to theHolocaust, can suggest that Poles perpetrated or participated in German atrocities, and emphasised that Poland was the victim of the Nazis' crimes.[43][75]
In 2008, the chairman of the PolishInstitute of National Remembrance (the IPN) wrote to local administrations, calling for the addition of the word "German" before "Nazi" to all monuments and tablets commemorating Germany's victims, stating that "Nazis" is not always understood to relate specifically to Germans. Several scenes of atrocities conducted by Germany were duly updated withcommemorative plaques clearly indicating the nationality of the perpetrators. The IPN also requested better documentation and commemoration of crimes that had been perpetrated by theSoviet Union.[76]
The Polish government also askedUNESCO to officially change the name "Auschwitz Concentration Camp" to "Former Nazi German Concentration Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau", to clarify that the camp had been built and operated byNazi Germany.[77][78][79][80] At its 28 June 2007 meeting inChristchurch,New Zealand, UNESCO'sWorld Heritage Committee changed the camp's name to "Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940–1945)."[81][82] Previously some German media, includingDer Spiegel, had called the camp "Polish".[83][84]
On 6 February 2018Poland's President Andrzej Duda signed into law anamendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance, criminalizing statements that ascribe collective responsibility inHolocaust-related crimes to the Polish nation,[6] It was generally understood that the law would criminalize use of the expressions "Polish death camp" and "Polish concentration camp".[7][8][9] After international backlash, the law was revised to remove criminal penalties, but also the exceptions for scientific or artistic expression.[85] The law met with widespread international criticism, as it was seen as an infringement onfreedom of expression and onacademic freedom, and as a barrier to open discussion onPolish collaborationism,[85][86] in what has been described as "the biggest diplomatic crisis in [Poland's] recent history".[87]
And it's a convenient and expedient issue because everybody can agree that the term "Polish death camps" is a misnomer; that it's incorrect.
The Polish government continues to fan a metaphorical fire each time the foreign media or a politician – like President Barack Obama in 2012 – inadvertently refers to 'Polish concentration camps'. This misnomer has been heralded by politicians as a purposeful disinformation exercise and a pretext for new legislation which, as is clear from its formulation, extends beyond the prohibition of 'Polish death camps'.
[Anyone] who, in public and against the facts, ascribes to the Polish Nation or to the Polish State, responsibility or co-responsibility for Nazi crimes committed by the Third Reich,< ...> or who otherwise grossly reduces the responsibility of the actual perpetrators of said crimes, is subject to a fine or [to] imprisonment for up to 3 years. < ...> No offense referred to in paragraphs 1 and 2 shall have been committed if the act was performed as part of artistic or scholarly activity.
There is, however, a second layer in this debate, as the incrimination of "Polish camps" can also be referred to halt the debate on Polish post-war camps, which have been discussed already since the 1990s for instance regarding detention and labour camps in Potulice or Łambinowice. Recently, the journalist Marek Łuszczyna has called them "Polish concentration camps" with the intention to challenge the right-wing discourse. His argument is based on the fact that these camps used the infrastructure of earlier German camps.
A highly problematic trend has emerged just recently, creating a precedent in the Polish legal doctrine. In January 2017, the Polish edition of Newsweek magazine published an article by Paulina Szewczyk entitled "After the Liberation of Nazi Camps, Did the Poles Open Them Again? 'The Little Crime' by Marek Łuszczyna". The author of this article stated that after 1945 Poles reopened the Świętochłowice-Zgoda camp, a branch of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. A lawsuit against Newsweek's editor-in-chief was brought by Maciej Świrski, the president of the Polish League Against Defamation (RDI), based on the press law provisions. In January 2018, the court decided in his favour, ordering the editor-in-chief to publish a corrigendum admitting that the assertion of the existence of "Polish concentration camps" created by Poles is false. This initial ruling was subsequently upheld by the Court of Appeal and eventually the Supreme Court, the latter finding Newsweek's last resort appeal (cassation) to be unfounded.
Not tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands, but millions of human beings underwent manufacture into raw materials and goods in the Polish death camps.
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