Madam, - All over the world, Auschwitz has become a symbol of terror, genocide, and the Holocaust. It was established by the Nazis in 1940, in the suburbs of the city of Oswiecim which, like other parts of Poland, was occupied by the Germans during the second World War.
I was surprised, while reading Daniel McLauglin's articles in your editions of January 22nd and 24th ("The death machine" and "Mechanics of murder: how the Nazi killed") to find phrases such as "Polish camps" or "Polish extermination camps".
While these phrases may be grammatical in English, they mislead readers, especially those who have no deep knowledge about the atrocities of the second World War. As is written in Encyclopaedia Britannica, Auschwitz was "Nazi's Germany's largest concentration camp", or in Encarta: "Auschwitz was an infamous complex of concentration and death camps run by Nazi Germany during WW II, located in southern Poland. . ." You can find similar phrases in other good encyclopaedias, including the Encyclopaedia of Holocaust.
We, in Poland, attach much importance to the accuracy of descriptions of Nazi camps located in Poland. Historians estimate that among the people sent to Auschwitz there were not only at least 1,100,000 Jews from all the countries of occupied Europe, but also over 140,000 Poles, 20,000 Gypsies, 10,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and 10,000 prisoners of other nationalities.
The fact that the Nazis chose Poland as the place of planned and meticulously executed genocide has always been a traumatic experience, a source of pain and suffering.
I would appeal to Irish journalists to respect our feelings and use appropriate phrases that would not cause more torment to our nation, who bravely fought against Hitler's ruthless regime. - Yours, etc.,
WITOLD SOBKOW, Polish Ambassador, Dublin.