Polish diplomats have said they will protest after a German newspaper described the Sobibor German Nazi WWII death camp as a “Polish” camp.

Describing an exhibition by Otto Freundlich, a painter and sculptor of Jewish origin, the German Badische Zeitung daily said that he was killed in a “Polish” camp in 1943.

Poland’s Consul General in Munich, Andrzej Osiak, told Polish Radio that diplomats would “intervene in this matter.”

Anna Wawrzyszko, vice-president of a Polish association in Germany, said: "Writing about a ‘Polish’ camp today, when we mark the National Day of Remembrance of Victims of German Nazi Concentration Camps and Extermination Camps, is extremely distressing for Poles."

The use of the term “Polish concentration camp” by international media outlets has sparked numerous complaints from Poland in recent years, prompting some news agencies to change their style guidelines.

In 2007, following a Polish request, the World Heritage Committee attempted to clarify the matter by listing the Auschwitz camp as a “German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp”.

A group of Polish and German historians and geographers last month appealed to German publishers to remove “unacceptable” references to “Polish death camps” from school textbooks.

Poland was under German occupation from 1939 to 1945 and there were only German Nazi – and not “Polish” – concentration, labour and extermination camps, said the group, known as the Joint Polish-German Textbook Commission.

(pk)

Source: IAR/tvp.info