Embassy spokesman ‘surprised’ that US leader would misidentify Nazi camps as ‘Polish’ in speech honoring resistance fighter Jan Karski.
BERLIN – US President Barack Obama’s use of the term “Polish death camps” while awarding a posthumous Medal of Freedom to Polish-American resistance fighter Jan Karski sparked the Eastern European country’s prime minister to call for a more explicit apology and historical correction.
The White House expressed regret on Tuesday after Poland took offense at the term.
“Fluent in four languages, possessed of a photographic memory, Jan served as a courier for the Polish resistance during the darkest days of World War II,” the US president said in honoring Karski. “Before one trip across enemy lines, resistance fighters told him that Jews were being murdered on a massive scale, and smuggled him into the Warsaw Ghetto and a Polish death camp to see for himself. Jan took that information to president Franklin Roosevelt, giving one of the first accounts of the Holocaust and imploring to the world to take action.”
US National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor stated that Obama “misspoke” by referring to “Polish death camps” rather than “Nazi death camps” inside occupied Poland.
Vietor’s statement came after Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski tweeted that Obama “will apologize for this outrageous error,” ascribing it to “ignorance and incompetence,” according to BuzzFeed.
Poles insist on the term “Nazi death camps” to describe facilities such as Auschwitz and Sobibor.
“We regret this misstatement, which should not detract from the clear intention to honor Mr. Karski and those brave citizens who stood on the side of human dignity in the face of tyranny,” Vietor said.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk declared that “this truth about World War II is important and must also have importance for every other nation. I am convinced that today, our American friends are capable of a stronger reaction – a clearer one, and one which perhaps eliminates, once and for all, these types of mistakes – than just the correction itself and the regret which we heard from the White House spokesperson.”
The White House expressed regret on Tuesday after Poland took offense at the term.
“Fluent in four languages, possessed of a photographic memory, Jan served as a courier for the Polish resistance during the darkest days of World War II,” the US president said in honoring Karski. “Before one trip across enemy lines, resistance fighters told him that Jews were being murdered on a massive scale, and smuggled him into the Warsaw Ghetto and a Polish death camp to see for himself. Jan took that information to president Franklin Roosevelt, giving one of the first accounts of the Holocaust and imploring to the world to take action.”
US National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor stated that Obama “misspoke” by referring to “Polish death camps” rather than “Nazi death camps” inside occupied Poland.
Vietor’s statement came after Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski tweeted that Obama “will apologize for this outrageous error,” ascribing it to “ignorance and incompetence,” according to BuzzFeed.
Poles insist on the term “Nazi death camps” to describe facilities such as Auschwitz and Sobibor.
“We regret this misstatement, which should not detract from the clear intention to honor Mr. Karski and those brave citizens who stood on the side of human dignity in the face of tyranny,” Vietor said.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk declared that “this truth about World War II is important and must also have importance for every other nation. I am convinced that today, our American friends are capable of a stronger reaction – a clearer one, and one which perhaps eliminates, once and for all, these types of mistakes – than just the correction itself and the regret which we heard from the White House spokesperson.”
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