The recent erroneous references on RTÉ Ireland’s National Television and Radio Broadcaster in their news bulletins last week caused much pain and anxiety for the Polish community in Ireland and in Poland. RTÉ has repeatedly referred to Stutthof as the ‘Polish concentration camp’ or ‘concentration camp in Poland’.
This is absolutely false information.
Concentration camps in Europe during the World War II where organised and run under the Germany Nazi state. The Stutthof concentration camp was created within the Free City of Danzig territory, which after Nazi Germany invasion to Poland on 1st of September 1939 was formally incorporated into the Nazi Germany State – the German Reich.
The occupation policy of the German Third Reich in Poland and other countries of Central and Eastern Europe was to be used to expand the living space for Germans (Lebensraum), which in the long run meant physical extermination and the destruction of the culture of some nations. The Polish nation and other nations of Central Europe were treated by the Germans as “subhumans”, destined in whole or in part for physical extermination or murderous exploitation by forced labour for the needs of the Third Reich. The destruction of the Slavic nations was established by the “General Plan for the East” (Generalplan Ost) developed under the direction of Heinrich Himmler in 1941.
During the German occupation in Poland, there was no centre of power that cooperated in any way with Nazi Germany. The Poles, who found themselves in German occupied territory, opposed the aggressive policies of Hitler and the German Reich. In turn they were persecuted and exterminated.
The Polish state elite, the Polish Government and the Polish Underground State also took an unequivocally negative stance on the German policy of persecuting the Jewish population, and ultimately the Holocaust. The legal government of the Republic of Poland in London has expressed this position many times in public, warning Polish citizens that participation in German crimes and crimes will be punished.
Poland, as the victim of Nazi German invasion, was strongly against denial and minimisation of the crimes of the Holocaust. Moreover, the Polish Government-in-Exile and the Polish Underground State operating in German-occupied territories were the first to alert the Western Allies about the extermination of Jews by Nazi Germany. Witold Pilecki volunteered to be imprisoned in Auschwitz for the Polish Underground state to organise resistance movement there and record the atrocities. His report was the first comprehensive record of a Holocaust death camp to be obtained by the Allies. Starting in 1940 Polish courier Jan Karski reported to Polish, British and US governments about Germany’s operation of extermination camps on Polish soil that were murdering Jews, Poles and others. Based on this information on December 10, 1942, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland in exile, Edward Raczyński, sent a diplomatic note to the foreign ministers of the 26 governments signatories of the United Nations Declaration alerting them to the German crime against Jews. It identified Treblinka, Bełżec and Sobibór by name as extermination camps. As a consequence, on December 17, 1942, the Joint Declaration of Members of the United Nations was created, in which a promise was made to severely punish those responsible for the Holocaust.
Polish authorities did what they could to stop the horrors of the camps. Therefore it is of utmost importance to use adequate terminology when describing World War II and the Holocaust. Polish citizens, both Jews and Poles, where the main victims of German Nazi Concentration camps in occupied Poland. The camps were German, not Polish. If you call something Polish, it immediately brings a sense of ownership, it denotes its provenance. The atrocities that took place in the extermination camps are thus attributed to the Polish people. Victims are thus confused with the oppressors. This brings so much hurt, anger and frustration. In the long term, it also leads to the transfer of negative emotions associated with concentration camps onto the Polish people.
The Polish Embassy in Dublin received numerous reactions from both Polish and Irish RTÉ viewers who were distraught by the report. We are especially grateful to our Irish friends who immediately reacted to the false statements aired by the national broadcaster. They know much about Poland’s past and its heroic stance. Still, there is not enough knowledge about Poland’s history among the wider Irish population. It is not common knowledge that Polish soldiers were fighting in all theatres of war from the first to the last day, despite being defeated in 1939. The contribution of Polish pilots to the victory of the Battle of Britain is often forgotten, as is the contribution of the Polish mathematicians to breaking the Enigma code. It is also not widely known that German-occupied Poland was the only European territory where the Germans punished any kind of help to Jews with death, not just for the helper but his/her entire family. Yet many Poles risked their lives saving Jewish people and many paid the ultimate price. We want more Irish people to have this knowledge and we are counting on media in Ireland to help share this knowledge.
Bearing in mind all the sufferings Poland went through during World War II, the matter of remembrance and an adequate memory about the Nazi German concentration and death camps as well as other crimes against humanity is extremely important to the Polish government. Repeating information that the place of extermination of predominantly Polish citizens, both Jews and Poles was “Polish” is not only hurtful but simply wrong, and we see it in line with other Holocaust denial theories.
An apology and clarification from RTÉ is much needed for the Polish community, especially those who now call Ireland their second home. It will be seen as a sign of strength and reliability of the trusted national broadcaster, who can face up to, what we believe was – a genuine and unintended mistake.
Ambassador of the Republic of Poland, Anna Sochańska