Poland Protests to Spanish Media for Attributing It the German Death Camps

@ElentirENG ES 12·08·2017 · 19:02 0

The Embassy of Poland has filed complaints, through Twitter, to two Spanish media for attributing to that country the extermination camps created by the German Nazis in it.

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A lie that Obama launched in 2012

This false attribution to Poland has been repeated for decades in certain media and also by some politicians. The best-known case occurred in May 2012, when Obama spoke of "Polish death camps" to refer to the extermination camps created by the Nazis in Poland, which provoked outrage in this country. In May 2017 the Polish Anti-Defamation League sued the Spanish newspaper El País for blaming Poland for the Holocaust. That newspaper accused Poland of "victim and executioner" and endorsed the lies launched by the Stalinist propaganda after the Second World War to discredit the Poles.

Complaints from the Embassy of Poland to the newspaper Abc and Cadena SER

Regrettably, whether intentionally or not, the attribution to Poland of the Nazi extermination camps has continued to appear in some Spanish media. On December 1, the Polish Embassy in Madrid sent a complaint to the newspaper Abc about a story published the previous day in which the expression "Polish concentration camp" was used in reference to Auschwitz. The newspaper Abc corrected the error, suppressing the word "Polish". Today the Embassy has once again issued a complaint, this time addressed to the Cadena SER, following a news item on November 30 in which they cite Auschwitz as a "Polish extermination camp". At the moment, the Grupo PRISA's station has not corrected this error.

The struggle of the Poles to save the Jews from extermination

These attributions are especially unfair if we take into account that the Poles were the European people who fought the most and took the highest risk to save the Jews from extermination. The Polish Armia Krajowa was the only resistance organization of the Second World War that created a section especially aimed at helping the Jews: the Żegota. Poland was the only country occupied by Germans in which helping Jews was condemned with the immediate execution of all the residents of a house, both adults and children, brutal punishments that began to be imposed at the very beginning of the war. Despite this, 1.2 million Poles participated in actions to hide or rescue Jews, 450,000 Poles hid Jews in their homes and in 300 villages the Poles managed to save all their Hebrew neighbors. Many Poles were executed for it. In fact, the Poles are the most numerous national group among the Righteous among the Nations declared by Israel. It was precisely an officer of the Polish resistance, Witold Pilecki, who unveiled the Holocaust after infiltrating Auschwitz and staying there almost a thousand days. To this we must add a fact that many forget: 2.7 million Polish Catholics were killed by the Nazis, but outside Poland almost nobody talks about them.