Dear All,
since 2014, the Polish League Against Defamation has been systematically providing information, to editors and journalists around the world before the International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27th), regarding the correct naming of German Nazi concentration and death camps, such as Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The initiative was launched by the Polish League Against Defamation to prevent the use of wrong terms such as „Polish Auschwitz camp” and similar expressions, which are false memory codes (e.g., „Polish concentration camp,” etc.). These false terms appear regularly in the media when reporting on the anniversary of the occupation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Red Army in 1945. The goal of this initiative is to eliminate the use of untrue expressions that mislead world opinion.
The content of the reminder sent to the editors of the world media includes information that the phrase „Polish camp” is an „Auschwitz lie,” and that the use of such terms is inconsistent with historical truth.
In the letter sent, the Polish League Against Defamation both points out the correct nomenclature of German camps and also presents historical information, which is an element of education dedicated to representatives of the world media and their audiences. The content of the letter also points out the consequences of using untrue terms that can realistically harm Poland. The use and reproduction of such terms causes Poland and Poles to be burdened with co-responsibility for German crimes.
The content of the letter sent to foreign media journalists:
The Polish League Against Defamation informs and warns, in connection with the upcoming anniversary of the entry of the Red Army into Auschwitz:
In previous years, there have been many instances of the use of the term „Polish extermination camp Auschwitz” or „Polish concentration camp Auschwitz” in anniversary articles.
The Auschwitz extermination camp was established in 1940 by the Germans on Polish territory occupied by the Third German Reich after the invasion of Poland in September 1939. Initially, the purpose of this camp was to exterminate the Polish intelligentsia. After its establishment, Auschwitz became the site of the mass extermination of Jews.
The Polish government had been in exile since September 1939, first in France and later in Great Britain, and had no jurisdiction in the German-occupied territories. According to the Hague Convention, responsibility for events in an occupied territory is assumed by the occupying power, in this case the Third German Reich.
The genocide perpetrated by the Germans in 1939-1945 against Poles, Jews, Roma and other peoples in concentration and extermination camps, in camps set up in German-occupied Poland by the authorities of the Third German Reich, was carried out with the indifference of the allies of the anti-Nazi coalition. The Polish Government-in-Exile repeatedly alerted the free world to the genocide being carried out by the Germans.
In Poland there was the largest resistance movement in German-occupied Europe, both military and civilian. The authorities of the Polish underground state organization issued and executed death sentences on all those who tried to join the German plot to persecute Jews.
The Germans introduced in occupied Poland the death penalty for helping Jews – for hiding them or supporting them in any way. This punishment affected entire families, adults and children. Despite this, Poles helped their Jewish fellow citizens. Thousands of Poles were killed by the Germans for helping Jews.
The German concentration and extermination camps on Polish territory, including Auschwitz, were German institutions, with German state personnel, carrying out German economic and political tasks.
Therefore, the Polish League Against Defamation reminds, in connection with the anniversary of the Red Army’s entry into Auschwitz, that the correct name of Auschwitz is „German Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz.” The term „German Nazi concentration/extermination camp” refers to all camps that the Germans established in occupied Europe and in their own country.
There were no „Polish concentration camps.” Poles, along with Jews, were victims of German genocide. Poland lost almost 20% of its population as a result of the war unleashed by the Germans.
The term „Polish concentration camps” is an „Auschwitz lie,” that is, a denial of German perpetration of the Holocaust, prosecuted under the laws of many countries, including the Federal Republic of Germany.
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Soviets at Auschwitz
„Auschwitz is a symbol of evil, but not just a symbol. More than a million people were murdered there. One million Jews and tens of thousands more! Auschwitz became a black, dark abyss of human-inhuman history, and the Polish land, which for Jews for more than 800 years was a land of common life and peace, became a cursed land by the Germans. Auschwitz is a symbol of barbarism, inhumanity, racism and xenophobia!” the former Israeli ambassador to Poland, the late Shevah Weiss, once said. This prominent politician was right. The German concentration camp, established on a patch of Polish land – in the small town of Oswiecim, as well as in nearby villages – has become a symbol of German crimes – some of the most horrific that humanity has witnessed.
In 1940, i.e. a few months after the Third Reich’s aggression against Poland, high-ranking German SS officers began to realize that their prisons and camps, deployed, for example, in Upper Silesia, and prepared and filled gradually with detained Poles, were beginning to overcrowd. In view of the above, they decided to create another concentration camp to house the citizens of the Second Polish Republic, who were deprived of their freedom on a massive scale in the following months of World War II. The Germans’ choice at the time fell on Auschwitz, specifically the military barracks. Interestingly, however, a special commission examining the site, chaired by Sachsenhausen camp commandant Walter Eisfeld, concluded that the Auschwitz barracks were unsuitable for a so-called kacet (short for German konzentrationslager, or concentration camp).
Despite these objections, however, it was decided that Auschwitz would be the site of the camp, which went down in history under the notorious name Auschwitz concentration camp. In the spring of 1940, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler issued an order to establish the camp, and Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höß became its first commandant. He was later replaced by Arthur Liebehenschel in 1943, and the latter, the following year, by Richard Baer. All three were declared criminals after the war, although only Höß and Liebehenschel bore actual responsibility for their activities at Auschwitz.
It is worth noting at this point that Auschwitz was not a single camp. It was a whole network of camps and sub-camps – more than forty in all, both concentration and extermination camps. But starting from the beginning… on the grounds of the already mentioned barracks in Auschwitz, the first concentration camp was established, the so-called Auschwitz, called by the Germans the „Stammlager,” or main camp, because it was there that the command center of this terrible place was located. There, the famous inscription „Arbeit macht frei,” which translates to „work makes free,” was placed on the camp gate. Initially, this inscription was read by Polish intelligentsia, who were brought to Auschwitz in mass, starting as early as June 1940. – The first transport to the camp arrived exactly on June 14 from the Tarnów prison. Among the more than seven hundred prisoners who were sent to the German „kacet” in Auschwitz at that time, for example, was Stanislaw Ryniak, an activist in the Polish underground, who was given/titled camp number 31. In addition to him, the famous boxer Tadeusz Pietrzykowski alias „Teddy”, who fought fistfights in the camp, also arrived at Auschwitz.
Both Pietrzykowski and Ryniak survived the German inferno, and also survived the war. Others, and there were more than a million of them, were not so lucky. It was in Auschwitz, for example, that the saint of the Catholic Church, Father Maximilian Kolbe, who went to his death for his fellow prisoner. By the way, the Orthodox clergyman and saint, Georgian Gregory Peradze, was also to die in a manner similar to Kolbe.
Auschwitz was initially a place for the detention and extermination of the Polish elite. People were murdered gradually, mainly through executions, but mainly through the living conditions they were created. It was also the site of criminal pseudo experiments carried out by Germans with medical degrees, such as Carl Clauberg, Karl Gebhardt and Josef Mengele. In subsequent years, the site in question became a concentration camp mainly for Gypsies, Poles and Jews. At the same time, it was the largest center for the immediate murder of Jews during the period of the so-called Final Solution of the Jewish Question.
In addition to the „Stammlager,” as early as 1941 the Germans began construction of another camp, part of the complex described above, Auschwitz-Birkenau. The site was located in the village of Brzezina, not far from Auschwitz, and was initially intended for the thousands of Soviet prisoners who had been taken into Nazi captivity since June 1941. Ultimately, a different drama played out there. Auschwitz became the largest extermination site in history for Jews, who were first murdered in gas chambers and then burned either in crematorium ovens or, when the crematoria were overflowing, in open pits. According to historians’ calculations, a total of more than a million people perished in the entire Auschwitz complex: most, about a million Jews, more than seventy thousand Poles and tens of thousands of representatives of other nationalities. The bulk of these people were murdered precisely at Auschwitz-Birkenau….
In addition to the two described above, one of the three largest camps was also established in 1942, first as a sub-camp of Auschwitz and later operating as an independent Auschwitz-Monowitz. The site was located in the village of Monowice, about five kilometers from Auschwitz. There, prisoners were used for truly slave labor, mostly for the German chemical company IG Farben.
In addition to the above, Auschwitz had a whole network of sub-camps that housed prisoners working for German companies and factories. There were more than forty of them in total, and they were no different de facto from the main camps of the complex. People also died there, tormented by inhumane working conditions and German ruthlessness.
The sites described above were and are „indelible” evidence of German crimes during World War II. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that with the approach of the Soviet front, the Nazis decided to get rid of the problem and try to erase the traces of their crimes. They rushed the prisoners who survived this hell to the West, in so-called death marches. They also tried to burn as many documents as possible and dismantle or blow up the crematoria and other sites that showed the extent of their crimes committed against Europeans between 1940 and 1945.
Red Army soldiers from the 60th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front were the first to enter the remains of the German “kacets” in Auschwitz and nearby towns. This took place on January 27, 1945. More than seven thousand prisoners lived to see this historic moment. In a word, the representatives of one criminal state, namely the Soviet Union, freed the prisoners of another criminal state, namely the Third German Reich. This is one of the greatest paradoxes of those terrible events.
