GIVE THE POLES A BREAK.
The camps were no more “Polish” than a Jew from Morocco (or Iraq of Syria or Turkey) is a “Arab Jews.” They are Jews and descendants of Jews who now live or who lived in a country where the majority population is Arab.
“Moroccan Jew” is acceptable for a Jew living in,or descended from a Jew who lived in, Morocco.
Likewise “American Jew” for a Jew in the U.S. (or strictly speaking, in Canada).
But “Arab Jew?” Not hardly.
Similarly, the death camps are “nazi death camps” in Poland. True, all of the death camps were in Poland. Were the Poles more enthusiastic in plundering and murdering Jews than, say, the Ukrainians or Hungarians? How about the Czechs and the Russians (Soviets)? According to Massacres and Atrocities of World War II (http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/massacres_east.html), there was no shortage of people willing to murder Jews in Europe. After all, killing Jews was profitable; the murderers could plunder the Jews’ property with impunity.
The only difference between the death camps in Poland at the rest of Europe is that the nazi death camps were more efficient in executing and disposing of Jews – and others the nazis felt were sub-human – than firing squads or special vans into which carbon monoxide from the vans’ engines was fed.
No matter where they went in Europe, the nazis found enthusiastic support for killing Jews.
Was Poland any worse than any place else? Were the Poles any less sensitive to the smell of burning flesh; where they more innocent of what was happening in their back yards than, say, the Hungarians?
To state that Auschwitz II–Birkenau were “Polish” death camps is incorrect. They were nazi death camps in Poland.
Poland is not denying all of the death camps were in Poland, but it does object to having the camps referred to a “Polish death camps.”
Call the camps what they were: nazi death camps.
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
