Consul General of Poland Sets Record Straight on Nazi Death Camps in Occupied Poland

It was, in fact, a Nazi death camp and should have properly been referred to as a Nazi death camp

We have great admiration for the heroic people of Poland, a Catholic Nation, which stood up against the barbarism of the National Socialist Regime. From the heart of that proud nation has come many heroes and saints. The most recent, forged in the furnace of those years of travail, was Blessed John Paul II.

P>NEW YORK, NY (Catholic Online) - Last week, May 12, 2011, Catholic Online reported a generic story concerning the guilty verdict leveled against John Demjanjuk. In the original story the camp in question was inaccurately referred to as "Polish death camp". It was the Nazi death camp of Sobibor.

It was a Nazi death camp and should have properly been referred to as a Nazi death camp. Those evil camps were one of the many attrocities inflicted by the Nazi regime against the Polish Nation during those dark days of Nazi occupation. 

Upon being informed of the matter, the story was immediately corrected. In the interim, we received a letter which from Ewa Junczyk-Ziomecka the Consul General of Poland. It was sent to several news sources. We are happy to set forth the complete letter below for our readers.

We have great admiration for the heroic people of Poland, a Catholic Nation, which stood up against the barbarism of the National Socialist Regime. From the heart of that proud nation has come many heroes and saints. The most recent, forged in the furnace of those years of travail, was Blessed John Paul II.

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Dear Editors and Broadcasters,

Today, after three long decades of legal proceedings which took place in several countries, the arm of justice has prevailed, finding John Demjanjuk guilty of ordering the deaths of almost twenty-eight thousand Jews in the German Nazi death camp of Sobibor during World War II.

Sixty-six years after the war's end, John Demjanjuk's conviction is likely to be one of the last major cases involving former Nazi death camp guards responsible of mass murder. The outcome of the Munich trial has once again proven that, in the words of Elan Steinberg, the vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, "the pursuit of justice should know no barriers of time and geography."

I fully concur with those who believe that as inadequate and late in coming as today's verdict is, it satisfies our common desire for justice to be meted out. However, I am unhappy with the insensitivity of those media outlets which, once again, have managed to offend millions of Polish people here in the United States and around the world, by repeating in their news reports the slanderous phrase "Polish death camp," while describing the Nazi death camp of Sobibor.

I address all those members of the media who have used this inaccurate and offensive term when I say simply and unambiguously, there were no Polish concentration or death camps during WWII. All those terrible places of profound human tragedy were built, operated and administered by the German Nazis. The only death camps were German Nazi death camps, some of which were located in German-occupied Poland.

If Poland is to be referenced in any report, it should only be mentioned with this descriptive phrase: "Nazi German-occupied Poland." I strongly recommend that members of the news media follow in the footsteps of the San Francisco Chronicle, the Wall Street Journal and most recently the New York Times. These outlets have changed their respective stylebooks to disallow the use of the erroneous term, "Polish death camp." I implore you to make necessary corrections now and to refrain from journalistic sloppiness in the future.

Yours Sincerely,

Ewa Junczyk-Ziomecka
Consul General of Poland
in New York

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