9 Responses

1. I understand why feelings on this matter are running high, but would simply ask for accuracy of statements since, as you know, inaccuracy can lead to needless misunderstanding.

   Your article refers to “a Poland extermination camp”, but of course there were no such camps. What did exist were camps set up and run by German Nazis on Polish territory they had occupied.

   I would be grateful if you could amend the text to reflect the reality of what actually occurred. Many thanks,

2. That’s it, when it comes down to this they both join forces

3. #1 The Polish people were complicit with the Germans in trying wipe out all of Jewry.

4. Enshrined? Worshipped? Has this happened to any other nazi grave that we should be concerned of this happening?

5. Kudos to Greenfield & Hikind for working together on this issue. It’s nice to know that even though they have political differences, on the issues that matter they come together. Well done!

6. Some of you appear not to know the truth. Please listen to the experts (titles given at time of making quote)

   Timothy Garton Ash (British historian and author): Watching a German television news report on the trial of John Demjanjuk a few weeks ago, I was amazed to hear the announcer describe him as a guard in “the Polish extermination camp Sobibor”. What times are these, when one of the main German TV channels thinks it can describe Nazi camps as “Polish”? In my experience, the automatic equation of Poland with Catholicism, nationalism and anti-Semitism – and thence a slide to guilt by association with the Holocaust – is still widespread.

   Luigi Cajani (Professor of modern history at the Università La Sapienza, Rome): For many years Polish diplomacy has been combating the use made from time to time of the unhappy expression “Polish concentration camps” to refer to Auschwitz, Treblinka and so on. This expression is certainly wrong and misleading, because it conflates the geographical location of the Nazi death camps with their historical perpetrators.

   Professor Norman Davies (Author, British Historian): There were no Polish Nazis. There was no Polish branch of the Nazi Party. In 1939-45, there were no Polish armed forces under German command, and, unlike almost every other German-occupied country, no Polish volunteer divisions in the Waffen SS. Despite what one often hears, there were no ‘Polish concentration camps’, and there was no collaborationist government, as in Vichy France or in Norway.

   Steve Paulsson (Senior Historian of the Holocaust Exhibition Project Office (Imperial War Museum, Toronto), lecturer in Holocaust Studies at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and author of Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940-1945) from his article “‘Polish Complicity In The Shoah Is A Myth'” in which he says Poles: “face accusation after accusation over their involvement in the Holocaust”. This, however, does not mean that accusation after accusation is true.

   Shana Penn (Director Media Relations United States Holocaust memorial Museum): The most common error of concern, which I will discuss further on, is the identification of Nazi concentration camps on Polish soil as being “Polish concentration camps” instead of, as they were in reality, Nazi-run camps in German-occupied Poland during World War II.

7. As the son of a member of the Polish underground whose unit “Zoska” was acknowledged
   by Yad Vashem for saving 350 Jews during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising I would like to point
   out that calling any German concentration camp in German occupied Poland “POLISH”, or referring to a German concentration camp in occupied Poland as “in Poland”, “of Poland,” or “Poland’s,” is insensitive to the families of the millions of ethnic Poles who were killed, forced into slave labor, tortured, maimed, terrorized and starved during the brutal and inhuman occupation of Poland by Germany in the name of “Deuthschland, Deutschland Uber Alles” and “Lebensraum” for Germans. It is insensitive to a nation that rejected repeated overtures by Hitler to join the German Nazis in an alliance against the Soviets and did much to defy German Nazism, at extreme cost, from the beginning of WW II until the end. The camps were “German” and they were in German occupied Poland. Please change the text and please stop revising history through imprecise wording.
   Please note the following points on the proper reference to the GERMAN camps:
   1. There IS an extremely SIGNIFICANT, albeit subtle, difference between “in Poland” or “of Poland” and “in German occupied Poland”. “Poland” refers to territory in which Poles are in charge, while “German occupied Poland” refers to territory in which Germans are in charge through the use of force. Being that other European nations voluntarily allied themselves with Nazi Germany while Poland did not ally itself with Germany, this is an important
   distinction.
   1a. MUSEUMS/MEMORIALS OF some of the GERMAN concentration camps may be in PRESENT
   day Poland, but these actual German concentration CAMPS were in German occupied Poland.
   2. There is a difference between “German Nazi” and “Polish”.
   2a. The camps were German Nazi, not Polish. These are not interchangeable words.
   3. ALSO, the phrase
   “Nazi camp in Poland” is as bad (because it is imprecise, misleading and therefore insensitive)
   as “Polish Nazi camp” (which is outright false, and thereby misleading and insensitive) !
   4. THEREFORE, IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE ABOVE, PROPER TERMINOLOGY WOULD BE
   ONE OF:
   – Museum/Memorial of the GERMAN camp in PRESENT DAY Poland
   – Museum/Memorial of the GERMAN NAZI camp in PRESENT DAY Poland
   – GERMAN camp in occupied Poland
   – GERMAN Nazi camp in occupied Poland
   – GERMAN camp in Nazi occupied Poland
   – Nazi camp in GERMAN occupied Poland
   or the admittedly awkward
   – GERMAN Nazi camp in German occupied Poland (which has been, non the less, used regularly with no
   problems, being the most accurate and precise phrase from all the above).

   WORDS MEAN SOMETHING! You should know this …..

   Thank You
   Stefan Komar
   PS
   Please visit the Kosciuszko Foundation website to see a petition on this specific subject. Please note the names of Polish and Jewish scholars, holocaust victims, dignitaries, celebrities and resistance fighters who signed
   on to this petition.
   http://www.thekf.org:80/events/news/petition/

8. In response to Goq
   The Polish people were as complicit with the Germans to wipe out the Jews as they were complicit with the Germans to wipe out the Poles. 3 million ethnic Poles and 3 million Polish Jews perished. Your statement is unsupported and reflects poor education and bias.

9. Dear The Yeshiva World,

   Re: “…where he was convicted of being accessory to 27,900 murders at a Poland extermination camp.”

   There never was any “Poland” or “Polish” concentration camp. The correct terminology is “Nazi German Concentration Camp” in occupied Poland. During the German occupation, Poland did not exist as an independent or sovereign country on the map of Europe. Please make the appropriate correction to your article as it distorts historical facts and will mislead readers into believing what isn’t true.

   @The Goq falsely stated, “The Polish people were complicit with the Germans in trying wipe out all of Jewry.”

   Are you attempting to rewrite history? This statement represents only your distorted opinion, and nothing more. Poles (both Catholics and Jews) were victims of Nazi German aggression and terror.