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Polish Death Camps or German Death Camps? On the need for learning history
The Polish embassy in Ottawa has asked the Canadian government to counteract the slandering of Poland by the Canadian media. On April 30, the national news on CTV television carried a story on John Demaniuk’s being stripped of his US citizenship. The reporter referred to “the Polish camp in Treblinka.” As a result, the Polish embassy lodged a protest with CTV. On the part of the network, Robert Hurst replied that he did not regard the term as inappropriate and that it was used in a geographical sense, as it is used throughout North America.
Hurst claimed in his letter to the Polish embassy that the expression is correct and in common use, and refused to issue a correction. Representatives of the Canadian Polish community noted that Canadians know hardly anything about the Second World War, let alone events of the period in Poland and Central Europe, and that such phrases can therefore be misinterpreted. Sławomir Kowalski, press attaché at the Polish embassy in Ottawa, stated that this is not the embassy’s first exchange of correspondence with Hurst. Last November, CTV spoke about “Polish ghettos for Jews.”
During World War II, the Nazi Germans set up 6 extermination centers in occupied Poland and murdered millions of Jews there. Although it would seem natural to use the expression “German death camps” or “death camps in German-occupied Poland” when speaking of these tragic events, some people seem to regard this as less than obvious. A BBC newsreader made a similar mistake. On that occasion, the BBC reacted in a prompt and normal way to the Museum’s explanation of the error, and issued an assurance that its staff would not utter such nonsense in the future.
