Poles and Polish-Americans expressed outrage today at President Obama’s reference earlier to “a Polish death camp” — as opposed to a Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland.
“The White House will apologize for this outrageous error,” Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski tweeted. Sikorski said that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk “will make a statement in the morning. It’s a pity that this important ceremony was upstaged by ignorance and incompetence.”
The president had been trying to honor a famous Pole, awarding a Presidential Medal of Freedom to Jan Karski, a resistance fighter who sneaked behind enemy lines to bear witness to the atrocities being committed against Jews. President Obama referred to him being smuggled “into the Warsaw ghetto and a Polish death camp to see for himself.”
Sikorski also tonight tweeted a link to an Economist story noting that “few things annoy Poles more than being blamed for the crimes committed by the Nazi occupiers of their homeland. For many years, Polish media, diplomats and politicians have tried to persuade outsiders to stop using the phrase ‘Polish death camps’ as a shorthand description of Auschwitz and other exemplars of Nazi brutality and mass murder. Unfortunately this seems to have escaped BaracK Obama’s staff seem not to have noticed this.”
National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement, “The President was referring to Nazi death camps operated in Poland. The President has demonstrated in word and deed his rock-solid commitment to our close alliance with Poland.”
The White House also noted that the president had noted the bravery of Poles during World War II, perhaps in January 2010 in a video he sent to the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, when he referred to “those who tried to save” Jews, “Polish and Hungarian, French and Dutch, Roma and Russian, straight and gay, and so many others. … Auschwitz also tells another story — of man’s capacity for good. The small acts of compassion — the sharing of some bread that kept a child alive. The great acts of resistance that blew up the crematorium and tried to stop the slaughter. The Polish Rescuers and those who earned their place forever in the Righteous Among the Nations.”
It seems likely that a more formal apology will need to be issued.
Poland’s prime minister said Wednesday that remarks by President Barack Obama erroneously identifying a Nazi death camp as Polish had hurt all Poles and he expected more from the US than “regret”.
“I am convinced that our American friends can today allow themselves a stronger reaction than a simple expression of regret from the White House spokesman — a reaction more inclined to eliminate once and for all these kinds of errors,” Donald Tusk told reporters in Warsaw.
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13 Responses
Nope – the president was actually right on for once.
My Bubbie told me, “The Poles were worse than the Germans.”
Its good that the Polish are ashamed but they can’t change the facts. Yes they were under Nazi rule but not many Poles helped our grandparents during the war. 3 million jews were killed in their country and they blame everything on the Nazis.
My grandfather (left Poland at age 9) also told me – in those same words – “The Poles were worse than the Germans.”
The Poles were as bad or worse than the Nazi’s to the Jews
My grandparents also told me that the Poles were much worse than the Germans. While I may not like Obama, and his statement was likely just another gaffe on his part, it’s still accurate. The Poles have been given a pass regarding their very active involvement in the Holocaust and frankly should have been subject to war crimes trials and reparations just like the Germans were.
I once worked with someone whose father went thru the camps. He told me that he would never higher a Polish worker because his father said the same thing about the Poles.
My father, o”h, always said, “for the Nazis, ym”s, it was a job; for the Poles, it was a joy.”
Obama has never been very good at European geography or the history or World War II. If we wanted an historian, we’ld have elected Gingrich.
Um… Auschwitz is German for Oświęcim, Poland.
While from a formal, official point the President erred, in reality if the statement was made by a Jew, it could be deemed a Freudian slip. The Poles hated us, and after the war they tried, using multiple means to get rid of those Jews who tried to redeem their/family’s property which they were only too happy to have their hands on. Granted their were “yechidim”, who helped the Jews – but they were the tiny minority.
The truth must be said: over the course of historythe Germans were murdered the Jews. There are very many anti-Semites in Poland, but they murdered by far, by far, by far less Jews than the Germans. If not for the German Nazis, there would not be the Holocaust in Poland. And no, I am not a Polish Ger.
Much as I dislike 0bama, he gets a pass from me on this one. As much as the Poles hated the Germans, they saw this as the one good thing the Germans were doing, and they did everything they could to assist them. If they didn’t kill as many as the Germans, it wasn’t for lack of will or of trying, but of technology. They richly deserved their 40 years of slavery to the communists, and they deserve to have the camps attributed to them.