"Dear NY Post, Auschwitz was a camp established and managed by Germans on territory occupied by them in Poland. There is no doubt about this. And yet, you allow [...] lies to be presented as facts by calling it a ‘Polish camp.’ This demands immediate correction"
That is how Krystyna Piórkowska responded on the X platform to an article about Auschwitz, in which the author used the inaccurate term "Polish camp". Piórkowska is a researcher specialising in the history of the Katyn massacre and the author of English-Speaking Witnesses to Katyn. The Latest Research.
The New York Post, an American tabloid published in New York City and owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, published a moving story on 27 January 2025. Titled “Miracle’ Auschwitz babies reveal how they escaped the Holocaust after being written off as having almost no chance of survival, the piece” by Doree Lewak ecounts the stories of two sisters, Eleonore Sbornik and Eva Umlauf. Eleonore was born in the camp on 30 April 1945, while Eva was sent there shortly after her birth in
December 1942. Both survived their time in the camp.
Regrettably, in the second paragraph of the text, Lewak wrote: “Born in the Polish camp’s infirmary on April 30, 1945, a few months after Allied forces liberated it, Eleonora Sbornik was a sick and weak baby who Red Cross doctors wrote off with almost no chance of surviving — yet she did.”
Rampa, a Polish-American radio station broadcasting in the United States, was among the first to call out and object to Lewak’s misleading terminology. They also reported on the response of Polish diplomatic officials. “With regard to the article by Ms. Doree Lewak, dated January 27, 2025, published on the New York Post website, we requested an immediate correction on the same day of a historically inappropriate and misleading phrase used in one sentence, specifically the wording “Born in the Polish camp’s infirmary (…)”. We suggested replacing this phrase with “German Nazi death camp in occupied Poland” to ensure historical accuracy,” wrote Mateusz Sakowicz, Consul General of the Republic of Poland in New York. (However, editors ultimately opted to replace the term with “Nazi death camp.”).
Paweł Żuchowski, a correspondent for RMF FM in the USA, also identified the misrepresentation, locating another article on the NYP website containing the phrase “Polish camp” Bogdan Klich, the Chargé d’Affaires of the Republic of Poland in the United States, responded to his post, stating, "The principle of zero tolerance for historical inaccuracies is paramount, irrespective of where such inaccuracies are published. The Embassy will respond to every such instance including this one.”
“The article printed in the New York Post, falsely claims that Auschwitz was a Polish death camp. From the historical point there is no such thing, Auschwitz was a concentration camp operated by Germany in occupied Poland 1939-1945 during Second World War. The Polish government and Polish citizens were absolutely not part of the organisation of this camp but the Germans were,” emphasised Dr. Iwona Korga, President of the Jozef Pilsudski Institute in the USA.
“In Auschwitz Germans killed more than 1 million people, mostly Jews but there were also Polish citizens, Romani and Russian prisoners of the war. On the 80th Anniversary of the liberation of this camp it is very important to remember that the truth about Auschwitz has to be said out loud – Germany is responsible for this camp not Poland and we never can forget about it,” she added.
New York City Councilman Robert Holden also condemned the NYP's inaccurate terminology in a statement released to Radio Rampa: “The continued misinformation labeling Nazi German concentration camps as ‘Polish’ is not only historically inaccurate but deeply offensive to the victims and the Polish community. “
The NYP editorial team eventually corrected the error, replacing "the Polish camp's
infirmary" with the more accurate term "the concentration camp's infirmary".
Written by ih
The Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was established by the Germans in mid-1940 on the outskirts of Oświęcim, a town annexed to the Third Reich by the Nazis following Poland's defeat in September 1939. This defeat resulted in the division of Polish territory between the invading forces of Germany and the Soviet Union.
Initially intended for Polish prisoners, KL Auschwitz received an estimated 130,000 to 140,000 Poles through direct transports or collective transfers, all of whom were registered and assigned identification numbers. An additional 10,000 Poles were murdered in the camp without being registered. It is estimated that at least half of the
Polish prisoners perished due to starvation, beatings, disease, excessive labour, lack of medical care, execution by firing squad or phenol injection, or in gas chambers.
Many others died after being transferred to other concentration camps. From the spring of 1942, Jews began arriving at KL Auschwitz in separate transports, although some Jews from various prisons were still placed alongside non-Jewish prisoners.
Between 1942 and 1944, as part of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" (Endlösung der Judenfrage), KL Auschwitz became the largest Nazi extermination site for Jews from territories occupied by the Third Reich and its European allies.
Of the Jews deported to Auschwitz in transports organized by the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), at least 1.1 million—including more than 200,000 children and adolescents—were murdered in gas chambers, either immediately shortly after arrival.
The largest group among the Jews deported in RSHA transports to KL Auschwitz consisted of approximately 430,000 men, women, and children deported from Hungary between the end of April and August 1944. Auschwitz also became the “final station” for approximately 300,000 Jews from occupied Polish territories (primarily from areas annexed into the Reich), 73,000 from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and Slovakia, 69,000 from France, 60,000 from the
Netherlands, 55,000 from Greece, 25,000 from Belgium, 23,000 from Germany and Austria (thousands of German and Austrian Jews arrived at Auschwitz via the Theresienstadt ghetto/camp in the Czech Republic), 10,000 from Yugoslavia, 7,500 from Italy, and 690 from Norway.
These deportations were initiated and predominantly organized by the German authorities and their collaborators abroad.
Source: MEMORIAL AND MUSEUM AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU
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