Auschwitz Getting a New Name?


Poland wants Auschwitz renamed - Yahoo! News

Ran accross this article today and knew I needed to post it for Travis mostly, but something just seems wrong to me changing the name of that place. Granted I’ve never been there and didn’t expierence the years of pain it put so many through, feels like it should just be left alone IMHO

AuschwitzWARSAW (Reuters) - Poland is trying to change the name of Auschwitz concentration camp to emphasize that Nazi Germans, not Poles, were responsible for the most murderous center of the Holocaust.

The government has asked the
United Nations to change the name of its World Heritage site from “Auschwitz Concentration Camp” to “the Former Nazi German Concentration Camp of Auschwitz,” despite criticism of the move by some Jewish groups.

Warsaw is incensed by references in foreign media to the “Polish concentration camp” and “Polish gas chambers” to describe the Nazi Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps.

“We cannot continue to ignore repeated publications that defame Poland,” said Jan Kasprzyk, a Culture Ministry official.

“The new name is completely accurate. By stating who was the perpetrator of a war that ended more than 60 years ago, honest mistakes could be avoided,” Kasprzyk added.

Some 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, were murdered at the site, which remains at the heart of sometimes tense Polish-Jewish relations.

Maram Stern from World Jewish Congress accused Warsaw of seeking “to redefine history by changing the (Auschwitz) name,” comments which stirred uproar in Poland.

“Although the camp had been built and run by Nazi Germany, everyone in the area had known about its existence and workers were recruited from the Polish population in the neighboring village,” Stern said in a statement.

The Polish government denies the recruitment allegation and says Allied powers could have done more to halt the genocide by bombing the camp by plane.

Most Jewish groups said a name switch would not change much.


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