On 7th February 2008, Chargé d’Affaires ad interim at the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Canberra, Mr Witold Krzesiński, sent a letter of protest to the editor in chief of “The Australian” daily regarding incorrect phrasings and understatements included in the article on field trips for British students to the former Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz. The article published by "The Australian" was a short version of the article by Alexandra Frean of “The Times” which was published by the London daily on 04.02.2008. The letter has not been published in the Australian newspaper yet; nevertheless it was published (in the English language version) and positively reviewed by the Polish community periodicals (“Express Wieczorny" and “Tygodnik Polski”).  Both periodicals appealed to Poles living in Australia to send letters of protest to the editor's office of "The Australian". The letter was also published on the website of the Embassy (www.poland.org.au).

        "Unintentionally perhaps, Alexandra Frean's story "Day trip to Auschwitz for British students" (5 Feb.) contains serious distortions of vital historical facts. Its obvious implication is that the Nazi German Concentration and Extermination Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau (according to official UNESCO terminology) in German-occupied Poland during World War II was allegedly Polish. The story firstly informs readers that the Auschwitz death camp was located in Poland. It describes the camp's victims as "more than one million Jews, Roma, Sinti, gay, disabled and black people" but omits to mention the Poles, the very first to be incarcerated and murdered in Auschwitz, and fails to say that the Russians (Soviet POWs) were the next victims after June 1941. The readers are also told that Oswiecim is a "small town next to the Auschwitz death and concentration camp, where the local Jewish community lived before the start of the World War II."

        The words ‘German’ or ‘Germany’ do not appear even once. According to Frean's story, no Poles were imprisoned and killed in Auschwitz. Readers are also told that Jews who lived in Oswiecim were killed in Auschwitz. Most readers without a thorough historical knowledge of World War II will therefore conclude that these camps and the anonymous Nazis were Polish, not German. Is this what British schoolchildren will be taught?

        Auschwitz is simply the German name for Oswiecim, just as Birkenau is for Brzezinka. Both were forcibly incorporated into the Nazi German Third Reich after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939. Oswiecim's Polish and Polish-Jewish population was largely expelled into the German-run "General-Government" area. 

        The entire Auschwitz death camp compound was established and operated by German Nazis, not anybody else. In the second half of World War II, Birkenau became a major Nazi German extermination centre for European Jewry. Not only, however. Prisoners from 22 nations were imprisoned, tortured and murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Poland was never an ally of Nazi Germany and never had a collaborative regime. Six and a half million Polish citizens were killed during World War II - half of them Jews but half Gentiles. These are well documented facts”.  

Witold Krzesiński
Chargé d’Affaires a.i.