"Polish death camp" controversy
Term in reference to concentration camps built and run by Nazi Germany in Poland / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The terms "Polish death camp" and "Polish concentration camp" have been controversial as applied to the concentration camps and extermination camps established by Nazi Germany in German-occupied Poland. The terms have been criticized as misnomers.[1][2][3] The terms have occasionally been used by politicians and news media in reference to the camps' geographic location in German-occupied Poland. However, Polish officials and organizations have objected to the terms as misleading, since they can be misconstrued as meaning "death camps set up by Poles" or "run by Poland".[4] Some Polish politicians have portrayed inadvertent uses of the expression by foreigners as a deliberate disinformation campaign.[5]
While use of the terms was widely considered objectionable by Poles, an Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance in 2018 generated outrage, both within and outside Poland. The law criminalized public statements ascribing, to the Polish nation, collective responsibility in Holocaust-related crimes, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, or war crimes, or which "grossly reduce the responsibility of the actual perpetrators".[6] It was generally understood that the law criminalized use of the expressions "Polish death camp" and "Polish concentration camp".[7][8][9]
The amendment also prohibited use of the expression "Polish concentration camp" in relation to camps operated by the Polish government after the war on sites of former Nazi camps.[10] In a court case in January 2018, Newsweek.pl was sentenced for referring to the Zgoda concentration camp, operated by Polish authorities after World War II, as a "Polish concentration camp".[11][12]
In 2019, the Constitutional Tribunal of Poland ruled that the fragments of the amendment relating to the terms "Ukrainian nationalists" and "Eastern Lesser Poland" were void and non-binding.[13]