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"Polish death camp" and "Polish concentration camp" are misnomers that have been used in news media and by some public figures in reference to concentration camps that were built and run during World War II by Nazi Germany in German-occupied Poland. Such language is regarded by many Poles as offensive, and some of its inadvertent users have apologized.

When used in speech or writing about the Holocaust, these expressions have generally been meant to refer to the camps' geographic locations in German-occupied Poland, but they can be misconstrued as meaning "death camps set up by Poles" or "run by Poles" or "run by Poland". Polish officials, organizations, and private citizens, in Poland and among the Polish diaspora, have objected to such expressions as misleading. They fear that such phrasing will be understood by the uninformed as meaning that Poles operated the camps.

On 6 February 2018 an Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance was signed into law by Polish President Andrzej Duda. It criminalizes public statements that falsely ascribe, to the Polish nation, collective complicity in Holocaust-related or other war crimes or which "grossly reduce the responsibility of the actual perpetrators"; scholarly studies, discussions of history, and artistic activities are exempt from such strictures. It is generally understood that the law will criminalize use of the expressions "Polish death camp" and "Polish concentration camp".

While the Government of Israel, and Jewish organizations such as the American Jewish Committee, discourage use of such expressions as inaccurate, they view the new Polish legislation as an attempt to restrict discussion of the culpability of some Poles in the Holocaust.

Historical context

During World War II, three million Polish Jews (90% of the prewar Polish-Jewish population) were killed by the Germans and their captive Soviet collaborators recruited from prisoner-of-war camps. At least 2.5 million non-Jewish Polish civilians and soldiers also perished.

After the German invasion of Poland, unlike in most European countries occupied by Nazi Germany, where the Germans sought and found true collaborators among the locals, in occupied Poland there was no official collaboration either at the political or at the economic level. Poland never officially surrendered to the Germans but instead maintained abroad a government-in-exile, along with its own armed forces—ground, naval, and air—fighting the Germans.

A large part of prewar Poland was annexed outright by Germany. The population of the annexed territories, except for Jews, was willy-nilly given German citizenship, and men of military age were inducted into the German armed forces. The rest of German-occupied Poland, dubbed by Germany the General Government, was administered by Germany as occupied territory. The General Government received no international recognition.

Historians generally agree that few Poles collaborated with Nazi Germany, in comparison with the situations in other German-occupied countries. The Polish Underground State judicially condemned and executed collaborators.

According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, while Poland has the highest count of rescuers (6,532), and the Polish Government-in-Exile coordinated and oversaw resistance to the German occupation, including help to Poland's Jews, there were incidents, particularly in eastern Poland after Operation Barbarossa, where local Polish residents murdered Jewish neighbors, the best known such case being the Jedwabne pogrom.

As German forces implemented the killing, they drew upon some Polish agencies, such as Polish police forces and railroad personnel, in the guarding of ghettos and the deportation of Jews to the killing centers. Individual Poles often helped in the identification, denunciation, and hunting down of Jews in hiding, often profiting from the associated blackmail, and actively participated in the plunder of Jewish property.

However, many Poles risked their lives to hide and assist Jews. The Poles were sometimes betrayed by the Jews they were helping, if the Jews were found by the Germans—resulting in German murder of entire Polish rescue networks. The number of Jews hiding with Poles was around 450,000. Possibly a million Poles aided their Jewish neighbors. Some estimates run as high as three million helpers.

Occupied Poland was the only territory where the Germans decreed that any kind of help for Jews was punishable by death for the helper and the helper's entire family. Of the estimated 3 million non-Jewish Poles killed in World War II, up to 50,000 were executed by Germany solely as the penalty for saving Jews.

Polish citizens have the world's highest count of individuals who have been recognized by Israel's Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations— as non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from extermination during the Holocaust.

However, there were cases of Poles who were complicit in, or indifferent to, the rounding up of Jews. There are reports of neighbors turning Jews over to the Germans or blackmailing them (see "szmalcownik"). In some cases, Poles themselves killed their Jewish neighbors, the most notorious examples being the 1941 Jedwabne pogrom and the 1946 Kielce pogrom.

After the war, talk of Polish complicity was suppressed in Poland, and the 2000 book Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, by Jan T. Gross, shocked Poles. The 2013 book Hunt for the Jews by historian Jan Grabowski [pl], claiming that at least 200,000 Jews who escaped the ghettos were killed by Polish citizens, won the Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research but has been controversial among Poles who have viewed it as an attempt to undermine Poland and damage its reputation. The Polish government elected in 2015, headed by the Law and Justice party, has said it views assertions of Polish complicity as slanders and libels against Poland. In 2016 Poland's president said he was considering stripping Jan Gross of the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit that he had been awarded.

Rationale given for the expression

Defenders argue that the expression "Polish death camps" refers strictly to the geographical location of the Nazi death camps and does not indicate involvement by the Polish government in France or, later, in the United Kingdom. While many international politicians and news agencies have apologized for using the term, many have refused to do so, saying that it is a fact that Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Chełmno, Bełżec, and Sobibór were situated in German-occupied Poland.

Opponents of the use of these expressions argue that they are inaccurate, as they may be read as implying that the camps—located in German-occupied Poland—were a responsibility of the Poles, when in fact they were designed, constructed, and operated by Germany and were used to exterminate both non-Jewish Poles and Polish Jews, as well as Jews transported to the camps by the Germans from across Europe.

In the wake of Polish efforts to stop use of the expressions, especially after the introduction of what some critics termed the "Polish Holocaust bill" which would criminalize holding the Poles collectively complicit in the Holocaust, some Jewish politicians and journalists deliberately used the term, while objecting to the bill and to an alleged longstanding Polish government campaign to contact journalists who used phrases that the Polish government objected to. In turn, the director of Polish television TVP 2, Marcin Wolski, said on TV that those camps could be called "Jewish death camps", because Jews ran their crematoria.

Early use of the expression

As early as 1944, the expresion "Polish death camp", used in a strictly geographic sense, appeared in a Collier's magazine article, "Polish Death Camp", by the Polish resistance fighter Jan Karski.

Similar early-postwar, 1945 magazine uses of the term, in a geographic sense, occurred in Contemporary Jewish Record, The Jewish Veteran, and The Palestine Yearbook and Israeli Annual, as well as in a 1947 book, Beyond the Last Path, by Hungarian-born Jew and Belgian resistance fighter Eugene Weinstock, and in Polish writer Zofia Nałkowska's 1947 book Medallions.

Polish legislation

An Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance was adopted on 26 January 2018 by the lower chamber, the Sejm, and on 1 February 2018 by the Senate of Poland. The bill shall "eliminate public attribut to the Polish Nation or the Polish State responsibility or co-responsibility for Nazi crimes committed by the German Third Reich." The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has given, as an example of such misattribution, the use of expressions such as "Polish death camps."

Yad Vashem has denounced the Polish bill, saying that, while "Polish death camps" as a phrase is a historic misrepresentation, the legislation is "liable to blur the historical truths regarding the assistance the Germans received from the Polish population during the Holocaust."

A communiqué of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs states, however, that "The provisions of the amended act not limit freedom of research, discussion of history, or artistic activity."

Public use

Mass media

On 30 April 2004 a Canadian Television (CTV) Network News report referred to "the Polish camp in Treblinka". The Polish embassy in Canada lodged a complaint with CTV. Robert Hurst of CTV, however, argued that the term "Polish" was used throughout North America in a geographical sense, and declined to issue a correction. The Polish Ambassador to Ottawa then complained to the National Specialty Services Panel of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. The Council rejected Hurst's argument, ruling that the word "'Polish'—similarly to such adjectives as 'English', 'French' and 'German'—had connotations that clearly extended beyond geographic context. Its use with reference to Nazi extermination camps was misleading and improper."

In 2009 Zbigniew Osewski, grandson of a Stutthof concentration camp prisoner, announced that he was suing Axel Springer AG for calling Majdanek concentration camp a "former Polish concentration camp" in a November 2008 article in the German newspaper Die Welt. The case started in 2012.

In 2010 the Polish-American Kosciuszko Foundation launched a petition demanding that four major U.S. news organizations endorse use of the expression "German concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Poland".

Canada's Globe and Mail reported on 23 September 2011 about "Polish concentration camps". Canadian Member of Parliament Ted Opitz and Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Jason Kenney supported Polish protests.

In 2013 Karol Tendera, who had been a prisoner at Auschwitz-Birkenau and is secretary of an association of former prisoners of German concentration camps, sued the German television network ZDF, demanding a formal apology and 50,000 złotych, to be donated to charitable causes, for ZDF's use of the expression "Polish concentration camps".

ZDF was ordered by the court to make a public apology. Some Poles felt the apology to be inadequate and protested with a truck bearing a banner that read "Death camps were Nazi German - ZDF apologize!" They planned to take their protest against the expression "Polish concentration camps" 1,600 kilometers across Europe, from Wrocław in Poland to Cambridge, England, via Belgium and Germany, with a stop in front of ZDF headquarters in Mainz.

The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage recommends against using the expression, as does the AP Stylebook, and that of The Washington Post. However, the 2018 Polish bill has been condemned by the editorial boards of The Washington Post and The New York Times.

Politicians

In May 2012 U.S. President Barack Obama referred to a "Polish death camp" while posthumously awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Jan Karski. After complaints from Poles, including Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski and Alex Storozynski, President of the Kosciuszko Foundation, an Obama administration spokesperson said the President had misspoken when "referring to Nazi death camps in German-occupied Poland."In May 31, 2012 President Obama wrote a letter to Polish President Komorowski in which he explained that he used this phrase inadvertently in reference to "a Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland" and further stated: "I regret the error and agree that this moment is an opportunity to ensure that this and future generations know the truth."

Reactions

Polish reactions

Use of such expressions that include the words "Poland" or "Polish" is denounced by the Polish government and by Polish diaspora organizations. The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs monitors use of such expressions and seeks their correction and apologies for their use. In 2005, Polish Foreign Minister Adam Daniel Rotfeld remarked upon instances of "bad will, saying that under the pretext that 'it's only a geographic reference', attempts are made to distort history and conceal the truth." Use of the adjective "Polish" in reference to concentration camps or ghettos in occupied Poland, or to the Holocaust, can suggest, if unintentionally but always counterfactually, that the atrocities in question were perpetrated by Poles, or that Poles were active participants in the World War II Nazi governance of German-occupied Poland.

In 2008, in view of ongoing casual labeling, as "Polish", of atrocities that had been committed, and camps that had been built and operated, by Germany, the chairman of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (the IPN) wrote local administrations, calling for addition of the word "German" before "Nazi" to all monuments and tablets commemorating Germany's victims. IPN noted that, while the Polish expression for "Nazis" (Hitlerowcy) clearly connects to Germany, this is not so everywhere in the world, and that the change in wording would disabuse anyone who thought that responsibility for the German crimes against humanity committed in wartime Poland belonged to any entity other than Germany. Several scenes of atrocities conducted by Germany were duly updated with commemorative plaques clearly indicating the nationality of the perpetrators. IPN also requested better documentation and commemoration of crimes that had been perpetrated by the Soviet Union.

Concern about the expression "Polish death camp" propmpted the Polish government to ask UNESCO to officially change the name "Auschwitz Concentration Camp" to "Former Nazi German Concentration Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau", to make it quite clear that the camp had been built and operated by Nazi Germany. At its 28 June 2007 meeting in Christchurch, New Zealand, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee changed the camp's name to "Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940–1945)." Previously some German media, including Der Spiegel, had called the camp "Polish".

In January 2018, Israeli and Jewish comments about the Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance bill led, in Poland, to a spate of anti-Israel and antisemitic ripostes. State TV ran antisemitic crawls on a talk show; state-radio commentator Piotr Nisztor suggested that Poles who supported the official Israeli position might consider relinquishing their Polish citizenships; and TVP2 director Marcin Wolski remarked that the Auschwitz death camp might be called a "Jewish death camp", as Jewish Sonderkommando inmates had run its crematoria.

On 29 January 2018 Polish President Andrzej Duda responded to official Israeli objections to the Polish bill, saying that Poland had been a victim of Nazi Germany and had not taken part in the Holocaust. "I can never accept the slandering and libeling of us Poles as a nation or of Poland as a country through the distortion of historical truth and through false accusations." On 31 January 2018, before the Polish Senate vote on the bill, Deputy Prime Minister Beata Szydło said: "We Poles were victims, as were the Jews.... It is a duty of every Pole to defend the good name of Poland."

Israeli reactions

While Knesset member and former journalist Yair Lapid claims that "here were Polish death camps", other Israeli officials such as Education and Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett have termed the expression a "misrepresentation". The latter is also the official position of Yad Vashem. However, all Israeli government officials are in agreement that the concentration camps in German-occupied Poland were planned, built, and operated by Germany.

After Poland's legislature began steps to outlaw use of the expression "Polish death camps", some Israeli officials expressed concern that Poland might try to whitewash its wartime history. "Those who see themselves as defenders of Poland’s good name are often quick to point out that in Poland there was no Quisling regime comparable to that which existed in other countries occupied by Germany — and that the Polish underground fought the Germans tooth and nail," the director of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations, Laurence Weinbaum, wrote in The Washington Post in 2015. "The truth is that local authorities were often left intact in occupied Poland, and many officials exploited their power in ways that proved fatal to their Jewish constituents."

However, Weinbaum was also highly critical of what he termed "the wild assertions of some of the Israelis who have weighed in with sweeping charges of Polish culpability for the Holocaust, and erroneous, disparaging declarations about the provenance of Auschwitz." In a 1998 article he wrote that "Part of the hostility to Poland is based on the entirely false impression that Germany chose occupied Poland as the venue for their death camps because they could count on Polish cooperation in carrying out the Final Solution. Although there is no historical evidence to support that contention, it has gained wide currency and credence... Careless reference to 'Polish extermination camps', rather than German or Nazi camps, has also played a part in fostering this perception."

Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, Yad Vashem, has opined: "There is no doubt that the term 'Polish death camps' is a historical misrepresentation However, restrictions on statements by scholars and others regarding the Polish people's direct or indirect complicity with the crimes committed on their land during the Holocaust are a serious distortion."

On 29 January 2018, Israeli Foreign Ministry Spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon tweeted, "Of course they were not Polish. Those were German death camps."

Other groups and individuals

While the American Jewish Committee (AJC) has stated that it "has been for decades critical of such harmful terms as 'Polish concentration camps' and 'Polish death camps,' recognizing that these sites were erected and managed by Nazi Germany during its occupation of Poland", AJC has also said that, "while we remember the brave Poles who saved Jews, the role of some Poles in murdering Jews cannot be ignored", and that the AJC is "firmly opposed to legislation that would penalize claims that Poland or Polish citizens bear responsibility for any Holocaust crimes".

According to Dr. Efraim Zuroff, use of the expression "Polish death camp" is misleading. He says that "the Polish state was not complicit in the Holocaust, but many Poles were."

On 23 December 2009, British historian Timothy Garton Ash wrote in The Guardian: "Watching a German television news report on the trial of John Demjanjuk a few weeks ago, I was amazed to hear the announcer describe him as a guard in "the Polish extermination camp Sobibor". What times are these, when one of the main German TV channels thinks it can describe Nazi camps as "Polish"? In my experience, the automatic equation of Poland with Catholicism, nationalism and antisemitism – and thence a slide to guilt by association with the Holocaust – is still widespread. This collective stereotyping does no justice to the historical record.

On 3 February 2018, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel tweeted: "I have been organizing youth travel to Auschwitz and Majdanek for 15 years as a group leader. That these camps were German - there can be no doubt! The use of the term "Polish death camp" is wrong."

See also

• Anti-Polish sentiment
• The Holocaust in Poland
• Nazi crimes against the Polish nation
• Polenlager—German camps for Poles
• Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust
• Roundup (history)
• Żegota

Notes

1. White House ‘regrets’ reference to ‘Polish death camp’, JTA, 30 May 2012.
2. Gebert, Konstanty (2014). "Conflicting memories: Polish and Jewish perceptions of the Shoah". In Fracapane, Karel; Haß, Matthias (eds.). Holocaust Education in a Global Context (PDF). UNESCO. p. 33. ISBN 978-92-3-100042-3.
3. "Lawmakers vote to outlaw references to ‘Polish death camps’", Washington Post / Associated Press, January 26, 2018
4. Israel and Poland try to tamp down tensions after Poland’s ‘death camp’ law sparks Israeli outrage, Washington Post, 28 January 2018
5. Israel and Poland clash over proposed Holocaust law, Reuters, 28 January 2018
6. ^ The Controversy Around Poland’s Proposed Ban on the Term “Polish Death Camps”, Smithsonian.com, 29 January 2018
7. ^ A. H. Foxman: "Poland And The Death Camps: Setting The Record Straight" The Jewish Week, June 12, 2012.
8. ^ "Collaboration and Complicity during the Holocaust — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum". www.ushmm.org. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
9. Carla Tonini, The Polish underground press and the issue of collaboration with the Nazi occupiers, 1939-1944, European Review of History: Revue Europeenne d'Histoire, Volume 15, Issue 2 April 2008, pages 193-205.
10. Klaus-Peter Friedrich. Collaboration in a "Land without a Quisling": Patterns of Cooperation with the Nazi German Occupation Regime in Poland during World War II. Slavic Review, Vol. 64, No. 4, (Winter, 2005), pp. 711-746.
11. Adam Galamaga (21 May 2011). Great Britain and the Holocaust: Poland’s Role in Revealing the News. GRIN Verlag. p. 15. ISBN 978-3-640-92005-1. Retrieved 30 May 2012.
12. Kaczmarek, Ryszard (2010), Polacy w Wehrmachcie [Poles in the Wehrmacht] (in Polish), Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, ISBN 978-83-08-04494-0, retrieved 29 January 2018, Paweł Dybicz for Tygodnik "Przegląd" 38/2012.
13. Carla Tonini, The Polish underground press and the issue of collaboration with the Nazi occupiers, 1939-1944, European Review of History: Revue Europeenne d'Histoire, Volume 15, Issue 2 April 2008, pages 193 - 205
14. Klaus-Peter Friedrich. Collaboration in a "Land without a Quisling": Patterns of Cooperation with the Nazi German Occupation Regime in Poland during World War II. Slavic Review, Vol. 64, No. 4, (Winter, 2005), pp. 711-746. JSTOR
15. John Connelly, Why the Poles Collaborated so Little: And Why That Is No Reason for Nationalist Hubris, Slavic Review, Vol. 64, No. 4 (Winter, 2005), pp. 771-781, JSTOR
18. , pg. 499
19. Wacław Zajączkowski, Christian Martyrs of Charity, Washington, D.C., S.M. Kolbe Foundation, June 1988, ISBN 0945281005, pp. 152–178. German military police in Grzegorzówka (p. 153) and in Hadle Szklarskie (p.154) extracted from two Jewish women the names of Poles who had been helping Jews, and 11 Polish men were murdered. In Korniaktów Forest, Łańcut County, a Jewish woman, discovered in an underground shelter, revealed the whereabouts of the Polish family who had been feeding her, and the whole family were murdered (p. 167). In Jeziorko, Łowicz County, a Jewish man betrayed all the Polish rescuers known to him, and 13 Poles were murdered by the German military police (p. 160). In Lipowiec Duży (Biłgoraj County), a captured Jew led the Germans to his saviors, and 5 Poles were murdered, including a 6-year-old child, and their farm was burned (p. 174). On a train to Kraków, the Żegota woman courier who was smuggling four Jewish women to safety was shot dead when one of the Jewish women lost her nerve (p. 170).
20. Władysław Żarski-Zajdler, Martyrologia ludności żydowskiej i pomoc społeczeństwa polskiego (The Martyrology of the Jews, and Aid Given to Them by Poles), Warsaw, ZBoWiD, 1968, p. 16.
21. Hans G. Furth, "One Million Polish Rescuers of Hunted Jews?", Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 1, issue 2 (June 1999), pp. 227–32.
22. Richard C. Lukas, 1989.
23. Chaim Chefer (1996). "Righteous of the World: Polish citizens killed while helping Jews During the Holocaust". Those That Helped. The HolocaustForgotten.com.
24. Richard C. Lukas, Out of the Inferno: Poles Remember the Holocaust, University Press of Kentucky, 1989, ISBN 0813116929, p. 13.
25. "Names of Righteous by Country | www.yadvashem.org". www.yadvashem.org. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
26. ^ It’s complicated: Inaccuracies plague both sides of ‘Polish death camps’ debate, Times of Israel, 28 January 2018, Cnaan Lipshiz
27. Holocaust law wields a 'blunt instrument' against Poland's past, BBC, 3 February 2018
28. 'Orgy of Murder': The Poles Who 'Hunted' Jews and Turned Them Over to the Nazis, Ha'aretz, 11 February 2017
29. Poland's New Government Looks to Rewrite Polish Role in the Holocaust, Ha'aretz, 15 February 2016 (updated January 2018)
30. ^ Canadian CTV Television censured Archived 27 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine
31. Poland may criminalize term 'Polish death camp' to describe Nazi WWII Holocaust sites, UPI, 17 August 2016
32. Auschwitz Museum Made an App to Get Journalists to Stop Making One Critical Mistake, Adweek, 18 March 2016
33. ^ Piotr Zychowicz, Interview with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland, Prof. Adam Daniel Rotfeld Rzeczpospolita daily, 25 January 2005.
34. Piotrowski, Tadeusz (2005). "Project InPosterum: Poland WWII Casualties". Archived from the original on 18 April 2007. Retrieved 2007-03-15. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
35. Łuczak, Czesław (1994). "Szanse i trudności bilansu demograficznego Polski w latach 1939–1945". Dzieje Najnowsze (1994/2).
36. Lapid: Poland was complicit in the Holocaust, new bill ‘can’t change history’, Times of Israel, 27 January 2018
37. HOW I BECAME PUBLIC ENEMY NO. 1 IN POLAND, JPost, Lahav Harkov, 29 January 2018
38. I Used to Care About Polish Sensitivity to Charges of Holocaust Complicity. Not Anymore, Ha'aretz, Allison Kaplan Sommer, 28 January 2018
39. ^ Gera, Vanessa (31 January 2018). "Polish TV riposte to Holocaust bill criticism: Auschwitz was 'Jewish death camp'". Times of Israel. Archived from the original on 1 February 2018. Retrieved 2018-02-01. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
40. ^ Landau, Noa; Aderet, Ofer (1 February 2018). "Amid Holocaust Bill Spat With Israel, Polish State Media Suggests: Why Not 'Jewish Death Camps'?". Haaretz. Archived from the original on 1 February 2018. Retrieved 2018-02-01. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
41. Karski, Jan (1944). "Polish Death Camp." Collier's, 14 October, pp. 18–19, 60–61.
42. Contemporary Jewish Record (American Jewish Committee), 1945, vol. 8, p. 69. Quote: "Most of the 27,000 Jews of Thrace ... were deported to Polish death camps."
43. The Jewish Veteran (Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America) 1945, vol. 14, no. 12. Quote: "2,000 Greek Jews repatriated from Polish death camps."
44. The Palestine Yearbook and Israeli Annual (Zionist Organization of America) 1945, p. 337. Quote: "3,000,000 were foreign Jews brought to Polish death camps."
45. Weinstock, Eugene. 1947. Beyond the Last Path. New York: Boni & Gaer, p. 43.
46. Nałkowska, Zofia (1 January 2000). Medallions. Northwestern University Press. ISBN 9780810117433. Okazuje się, że w Rzeszy całe zastępy specjalistów zajmowały się rozpruwaniem ubrań i obuwia zwożonego z obozów polskich do centrali.
47. "Polen: Senat verabschiedet umstrittenes Holocaustgesetz". Die Zeit (in German). 1 February 2018. ISSN 0044-2070. Retrieved 1 February 2018.
48. "Communique of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on amendment of the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance". www.mfa.gov.pl. Retrieved 1 February 2018.
49. "Yad Vashem: Poland Holocaust law risks 'serious distortion' of Polish complicity". Retrieved 1 February 2018.
50. Press, Associated (27 January 2018). "Israel criticises Poland over draft Holocaust legislation". the Guardian. Retrieved 1 February 2018.
51. "Communique of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on amendment of the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance". www.mfa.gov.pl. Retrieved 1 February 2018.
52. "Polskie czy niemieckie obozy zagłady?" (in Polish). Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau w Oświęcimiu. 23 July 2004.
53. Marcin Wawrzyńczak, "'Polish Camps' in Polish Court," Gazeta Wyborcza, 2009-08-14, at http://wyborcza.pl/1,76842,6928930,_Polish_Camps__in_Polish_Court.html
54. S.A., Wirtualna Polska Media (13 September 2012). "Ruszył proces wobec "Die Welt" o "polski obóz koncentracyjny"". wp.pl. Retrieved 31 January 2018.
55. Petition against "Polish concentration camps," Warsaw Business Journal, November 3, 2010, at "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 16 July 2011. Retrieved 4 November 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
56. Petition against "Polish death camps" The Kosciuszko Foundation
57. "Canadian MPs defend Poland over 'Polish concentration camp' slur". Rzeczpospolita, Openparliament.ca. Polskie Radio S.A. 10 June 2011. Retrieved 27 July 2012.
58. "Były więzień Auschwitz skarży ZDF za "polskie obozy"". interia.pl. 22 July 2013. Retrieved 24 September 2014.
59. "Entschuldigung bei Karol Tendera". zdf.de. Retrieved 31 January 2018.
60. "Death camps billboard in 1,000-mile trip". 2 February 2017. Retrieved 31 January 2018 – via www.bbc.com.
61. Siegal, Allan M.; Connolly, William G. (2015). The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage: The Official Style Guide Used by the Writers and Editors of the World's Most Authoritative News Organization. Three Rivers Press. p. 72. ISBN 9781101905449.
62. "The New York Times bans "Polish concentration camps"". The Economist. Retrieved 4 February 2018.
63. "AP Updates its Stylebook on Concentration Camps, Polish Foundation's Petition for Change has 300,000K Names - iMediaEthics". iMediaEthics. 16 February 2012. Retrieved 4 February 2018.
64. ^ Board, Editorial (31 January 2018). "Opinion | 'Polish death camps'". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 4 February 2018.
65. Board, The Editorial (2018). "Opinion | Poland's Holocaust Blame Bill". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 6 February 2018.
66. "White House: Obama misspoke by referring to 'Polish death camp' while honoring Polish war hero". The Washington Post. 29 May 2012. Archived from the original on 31 May 2012. Retrieved 30 May 2012. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
67. "Why the words 'Polish death camps' cut so deep". nydailynews.com. Retrieved 31 January 2018.
68. http://doc.rmf.pl/rmf_fm/store/letter_from_president_obama.pdf
69. Interwencje. MSZ
70. ^ Government information on the Polish foreign policy presented by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prof. Adam Daniel Rotfeld, at the session of the Sejm on 21st January 2005 Archived 4 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine
71. ^ Template:Pl icon Akcja IPN: Mordowali "Niemcy", nie "naziści" (IPN initiative: "the Nazi Germans" committed Holocaust, not "the Nazis.") Fakty. Interia.pl, December 9, 2008.
72. Tran, Mark. The Guardian. (2007-06-27). "Poles claim victory in battle to rename Auschwitz."
73. Auschwitz Might Get Name Change, The Jewish Journal, 27 April 2006.
74. Yad Vashem for renaming Auschwitz, The Jerusalem Post, 12 May 2006.
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80. Israeli criticism sparks anti-Jewish remarks in Polish media, AP, 30 January 2018
81. Press, Associated (29 January 2018). "President says Poland did not take part in the Holocaust". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2 February 2018.
82. Editorial, Reuters. "Polish lawmakers back Holocaust bill, drawing Israeli outrage, U.S. co". U.K. Retrieved 2 February 2018. {{cite news}}: |first= has generic name (help)
83. לפיד, יאיר (27 January 2018). "I utterly condemn the new Polish law which tries to deny Polish complicity in the Holocaust. It was conceived in Germany but hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered without ever meeting a German soldier. There were Polish death camps and no law can ever change that". @yairlapid. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
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86. Weinbaum, Laurence (21 April 2015). "Confronting chilling truths about Poland's wartime history". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
87. Complicity of Poles in the deaths of Jews is highly underestimated, scholars say - Times of Israel, February 8, 2018
88. Laurence Weinbaum - Polish Jews: A Postscript to the 'Final Chapter' - Policy Study No. 14, Institute of the World Jewish Congress - Jerusalem 1998
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91. Nahshon, Emmanuel (29 January 2018). "Dear Polish followers - the issue is NOT the death camps" (Tweet). Retrieved 3 February 2018 – via Twitter.
92. AJC Opposes Polish Effort to Criminalize Claims of Holocaust Responsibility, AJC via PRNewswire, 27 January 2018
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96. https://twitter.com/sigmargabriel

• Holocaust historiography
• Nazi concentration camps in Poland
• Controversies in Poland
• Naming controversies
• Anti-Polish sentiment