It should be simple to make the proper distinction: Poland has a long and not distinguished history of anti-Semitism, including before, during, and after World War II. But it was not responsible for the death camps and the Holocaust.
This distinction is, however, too often glossed over and is the backdrop for the fierce Polish reaction to President Obama's slip in referring to the "Polish death camps" in recognizing Jan Karski, a hero of the Polish resistance to the Nazis, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Poles have heard and read about such references many times over the years and so it is not surprising that they take such comments, especially when they come out of the mouth of the president, as not merely a slip of the tongue or of the pen.
They are wrong about this in the case of the White House, but their anger is understandable. Poland was a victim of the Nazi terror machinery. It was the first country invaded, occupied and partly destroyed by the Nazis. To hear that they, rather than the Germans, set up the camps is galling to say the least. But why does it happen so frequently?
During the Holocaust, the camps were located in Poland because that's where the Jews were — at least three million lived in the country before the war. The Germans set up Auschwitz and the other camps there because of geography and transit. So some of this is sloppiness of language – it should be referred to as death camps in Poland or occupied Poland.
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