According to data provided to Polish Radio by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, last year Polish diplomatic missions intervened in 71 cases, marking a decrease compared to previous years.
"In 2023, there were 85 such interventions, in 2022 - 73, and in 2021 - 147. So, this trend is slightly decreasing, but we should not be reassured, because it's like a sinusoidal pattern," emphasized Paweł Wroński, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
As a result of efforts by Polish embassies, institutions like The New York Times and the Associated Press have adopted rules to avoid using inaccurate phrases related to Poland's history.
Wroński stated that these interventions are successful 90% of the time, and society is increasingly recognizing that such terms are a significant and painful historical mistake, which can lead to Poland being wrongly assigned responsibility for the Holocaust.
Poland's diplomatic efforts to combat historical inaccuracies decline, but challenges persist
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs highlights that these erroneous phrases mainly result from ignorance, but also from visual stereotypes about the Holocaust, perpetuated by films from the 1970s that inaccurately placed German camps on contemporary maps of Poland.
Between 2008 and 2018, Polish diplomats worldwide carried out 1,627 interventions regarding historical inaccuracies about World War II. The use of incorrect phrases in foreign media was particularly prevalent between 2015 and 2018, with the number of interventions exceeding 200 annually.
"There was no such thing as a Polish concentration camp. All camps were German," says Holocaust survivor
Edward Mosberg, a Holocaust survivor born in Kraków, Poland, emphasized during his 2019 visit to Auschwitz that, "There was no such thing as a Polish concentration camp. All camps were German."
He further stated that the Holocaust would never have occurred in Poland if it had not been for the Germans.
Even Barack Obama got it wrong: "Polish death camps" controversy
In 2012, President Barack Obama sparked controversy in Poland by referring to "Polish death camps" instead of "Nazi German death camps in occupied Poland" while awarding a posthumous Medal of Freedom to a Polish resistance hero.
The phrase was seen as historically inaccurate and offensive, as Poland was occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II, leading to strong diplomatic protests and an official White House apology.
Recently in Poland, Minister of Education Barbara Nowacka made a similar gaffe and later apologized for her mistake.
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Source: IAR/MSZ/CNN/X/@przeszpieg/@britishpoles
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