Poland plans to punish use of phrase ‘Polish death camps’

Poland has long protested the use of the phrase “Polish death camps” in news reports relating to the Nazi concentration and extermination camps built on Polish territory during World War II. Now the country’s new justice minister wants to punish those who use the phrase.

Zbigniew Ziobro said Saturday that the government will draw up new regulations to end the “blasphemy” of Poles around the world for the mistaken identification of Nazi death camps on Polish ground with the Polish state.

“This will be a project that meets the expectations of Poles, who are blasphemed in the world, in Europe, even in Germany, that they are the Holocaust perpetrators, that in Poland there were Polish concentration camps, Polish gas chambers,” Ziobro was quoted by Reuters as telling radio station RMF.

“Enough with this lie. There has to be responsibility,” he said.

The most notoriously efficient camps in the Nazi extermination machine were built in Poland. These include Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor and Treblinka.

The phrase “Polish death camps” is often found in publications outside Poland. The country was occupied by the Nazis and Poles largely want to be seen as victims of the Third Reich.

Ziobro, Reuters reported, said he had presented the project to Prime Minister Beata Szydlo and she reacted positively.