The government of Poland has asked the American toy maker Mattel to withdraw a party game, over a reference to “Nazi Poland” on one of its cards.

The request, made through the embassy in Washington, came a week after the US ambassador in Warsaw was summoned to the Polish foreign ministry over remarks made by the FBI director, James Comey, about the Holocaust and “the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary”.

The Mattel game, Apples to Apples, asks players to compare things – in its original version, nouns and adjectives – in order to create “crazy combinations” in a game “as unique as the individuals who are playing”. The game has sold in the millions and comes in many versions, including junior, kids Disney and Bible editions.

The card, which came to the attention of the Polish government, is entitled Schindler’s List and contains the text: “1993 Steven Spielberg film. Powerful, real-life story of a Catholic businessman who eventually saved over 1,000 Jews in Nazi Poland.”

A statement from the Polish embassy said the wording was “completely inconsistent with the historical truth and detrimental to the good name of our country”.

Mattel did not immediately comment. It was not clear which edition of the game contained the card in question.

Poland was occupied by Nazi Germany during the second world war. Millions of Polish citizens were killed. Death camps, including Auschwitz, Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor, were operated by the Nazis on Polish soil. Among Poles, correct terminology and attribution when discussing such issues remains a key concern.

The Polish embassy website, for example, offers readers a “how-to guide: against Polish death/concentration camps”. The text notes “an increase in the occurrence of factually incorrect slurs as ‘Polish death camps’ in news articles” and encourages readers to comment on and protest over such usages.

“We react whenever we see such slurs,” it reads. “We need you to do the same.”

Apples To Apples by Mattel. Photograph: Internet

Comey’s remarks were contained in a speech he gave at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington last week, which was subsequently published as an op-ed piece for the Washington Post.

In his speech, which was titled Why I require FBI agents to visit the Holocaust Museum, Comey discussed “ways to fight evil to ensure it doesn’t hold the field”.

In the passage which became contentious, he said: “In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn’t do something evil.”

In response, the Polish prime minister Ewa Kopacz, said: “To those who are incapable of presenting the historic truth in an honest way, I want to say that Poland was not a perpetrator but a victim of world war two.”

On Wednesday, in a letter to the Polish ambassador, Comey said: “I regret linking Germany and Poland in my speech because Poland was invaded and occupied by Germany. The Polish state bears no responsibility for the horrors imposed by the Nazis. I wish I had not used any other country names because my point was a universal one about human nature.”

The Polish foreign minister, Grzegorz Schetyna, said Comey’s letter was “better late than never” and added that the matter was closed.

Prime Minister Kopacz, however, said: “To be sure, every Pole had expected more.”

The FBI director is not the highest-placed US official to have experienced such embarrassment. In 2012, while presenting a posthumous Medal of Freedom to a Polish resistance fighter, Barack Obama used the phrase “Polish death camp”.

After the then Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, said the president’s remarks were evidence of “ignorance, lack of knowledge [and] bad intentions”, Obama expressed his regret for having “inadvertently used a phrase that has caused many Poles anguish over the years and that Poland has rightly campaigned to eliminate from public discourse around the world.”