Auschwitz museum app corrects ‘Polish death camps’

The Auschwitz museum on Tuesday launches a multi-lingual computer application that writers can use to avoid referring to Nazi German death camps as being “Polish.”

Warsaw routinely requests corrections when global media or politicians describe as “Polish” former death camps like Auschwitz set up by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II.

The move comes after Poland’s new right-wing government proposed jail terms of up to five years for anyone who refers to Nazi death camps as Polish.

Even if used as a geographical indicator, Poles insist the term can give the impression that they bore some responsibility for the Holocaust.

Dubbed “Remember,” the application is intended “to help avoid the use of the term ‘Polish concentration camps’ or ‘Polish death camps’ in 16 languages,” according to a statement issued by the Auschwitz state museum in Oswiecim, southern Poland on Tuesday.

File: Holocaust survivors walks with others through the main gate of the former Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Oswiecim, Poland on Jan. 27, 2016, the 71st anniversary of the death camp’s liberation by the Soviet Red Army in 1945. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

— AFP