Warsaw – Poland Plans Prison Terms For Using Term ‘Polish Death Camp’

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    Warsaw – The Polish government approved a new bill on Tuesday that foresees prison terms of up to three years for anyone who uses phrases like “Polish death camps” to refer to Auschwitz and other camps that Nazi Germany operated in occupied Poland during World War II.

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    The bill aims to deal with a problem the Polish government has faced for years: foreign media outlets — and even U.S. President Barack Obama — referring to the Nazi camps as “Polish.”

    The Justice Ministry said the Cabinet of Prime Minister Beata Szydlo approved the legislation during a weekly session on Tuesday. It is expected to pass easily in the parliament, where the nationalistic right-wing ruling Law and Justice party enjoys a majority.

    Poles fear that as the war grows more distant younger generations across the world will incorrectly assume that Poles had a role in running Auschwitz, Treblinka and other German death camps, a bitter association for a nation that was occupied and subjected to brutality that left some 5.5 million Polish citizens dead during the war, about 3 million Jews and 2.5 million non-Jews.

    “It wasn’t our mothers, nor our fathers, who are responsible for the crimes of the Holocaust, which were committed by German and Nazi criminals on occupied Polish territory,” Zbignew Ziobro, the justice minister, said Tuesday. “Our responsibility is to defend the truth and dignity of the Polish state and the Polish nation, as well as our fathers, our mothers and our grandparents.”

    Many Poles support such legislation and feel that it differs little from laws that some countries, including Poland and Germany, have that make Holocaust denial a crime.

    However, critics note that the government will ultimately be powerless to punish people outside of Poland, those most likely to use such language. They fear its true intent is to repress historical inquiry within Poland into Polish behavior toward Jews. Though the Polish state never collaborated with the Nazis, there were some Poles who killed Jews or identified them to the Germans. That subject is anathema to the country’s nationalistic leadership, which has an official “historical policy” of promoting knowledge of the heroic episodes in Poland’s past.

    There were also Poles who risked their lives to help Jews. The Israeli Holocaust museum Yad Vashem has recognized more than 6,000 Poles as “Righteous Among the Nations” for rescuing Jews, more than from any other country.

    The bill had been under discussion for many months and originally foresaw a prison term of up to five years. The version approved Tuesday is milder. The Justice Ministry says that prison terms of up to three years would be reserved for those who intentionally slander Poland’s good name by using terms like “Polish death camps” or “Polish concentration camps.” Those who use such language unintentionally would face lesser punishments, including fines.


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    7 Comments
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    qazxc
    qazxc
    7 years ago

    Polish Death Camps. There. I said it. Nah nah nah nah nah.

    7 years ago

    One thing I agree here is to lock up Obama for three years.

    7 years ago

    The polish were willing participants in exterminating the jews save for a few chasidei imus haolim. They deserve it wholeheartedly. POLISH DEATH CAMPS.

    RebelSheep
    RebelSheep
    7 years ago

    They were Polish. Making it illegal to speak the truth is a crime.

    7 years ago

    whilst some Poles did not like the Nazis and few even fought against them, many Poles did not like the Jews, as is documented in many holocaust survivor’s books that the partisans could be highly dangerous to a Jew.

    savtat
    savtat
    7 years ago

    VEE KIMPT HOYDEE IN BOOD ARAHN? What does Obama have to do with this?

    BTW, the Germans knew that they should put the death camps in Poland becaue there wouldn’t be widespread protest. And, after the war, in Germany, they stopped the killing. In Poland, even after the cease fire, the killing of Jews was still a widely accepted sport.

    It is true that there were exceptions. There were Poles who did risk their own lives and the lives of their families to save Jews. Sadly, it was the great exception.

    7 years ago

    I agree with #6 ; while it is true that there were Poles who saved Jews, the vast majority of Poles either looked the other way, or were hostile to the Jews. There were many collaborators among the Poles, who pointed out to the Nazis where the Jews were in hiding. They were rewarded with extra food for doing so. Even after the war, the surviving Jews were treated with hostility, and their homes were taken over by their Polish neighbors. There were two large pogroms during World War Two by Poles, against Jews; one occurred after the war ended. Even today, where Poland is for all practical purposes judenrein, there is still hostility towards Jews. It is no accident that many death camps were located in Poland (i.e. Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz). Of all of the countries in Nazi occupied Europe, on a per capita basis of Jews in the population, Polish Jewry suffered the most. Incidentally, during the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Poles refused to sell the Jews arms, and even when they did so, they ripped off the resistance fighters.