‘‘Polish camps’ – new war’

Published on 11 October 2013 at 09:01

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The Polish Foreign Affairs Ministry has launched a new offensive against foreign press using terms such as “Polish concentration camps” or “Polish death camps” to describe Nazi camps operated in occupied Poland during WW2.

Polish authorities have branded these “historic lies” as “faulty memory patterns” and want this expression to be used when discussing the misnaming problem in “public debate in Poland and abroad, especially Germany,” writes Rzeczpospolita.

Last year alone, Polish diplomats intervened on 120 occasions to ask newspapers for corrections. The daily notes in its editorial that

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Poland must have a firm historic policy not only because journalists on the other side of the world should know that Poles did not set up concentration camps, but also to match the clear-cut policies of our neighbours when describing their past.

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