Useful Quotes

Useful Quotes

Poland did NOT participate in the Holocaust. It could be considered an act of Holocaust Denial and Distortion to make such an assertion.

Here are selected useful quotes on the subject which could be used in correspondence/conversation with the media unjustly attacking Poland (a compendium of dozens of quotes can be accessed HERE):

  • IHRA Statement. 29.06.2017:
    “In recognition of the Stockholm Declaration (2000) commitment to ‘uphold the terrible truth of the Holocaust’ (defined as the mass murder of Jewry by the Nazis and their allies) against denial and distortion, and in acknowledgement of the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis and their accomplices during World War II, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) wishes to state that it shares the Polish government’s opposition to the historically unsupportable use of the terms “Polish Death Camps” or “Polish Camps” to refer to the camps and sites of persecution and murder established by Nazi Germany on invaded and occupied Polish soil. We strongly urge our members to stop using this term in discourse and in publications, and we encourage others to stop using it as well.”
    https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/statements/international-holocaust-remembrance-alliance-statement-historically-unsupportable-use
  • “There is absolutely no doubt about who bears responsibility for the extermination camps, about who operated them and murdered millions of European Jews there: it was Germans. This organized mass murder was perpetrated by our country and no one else. The actions of individual collaborators do not alter that fact” (GERMAN Foreign Minister, Sigmar Gabriel, stated on February 4, 2018)
    https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/en/Newsroom/bm-holocaust-legislation-poland/1432942
  • “Concentration camps. Given the sensitivity of this topic, take extra care in historical references to the Nazi concentration camps of World War II. For camps in countries occupied by Nazi Germany avoid ambiguous or misleading phrases like ‘Polish concentration camp” or “Polish death camp”, which could give the mistaken impression that the camps were run by Poland”. – New York Times Manual of Style and Usage.
  • “It is a historical error when news agencies reporting about the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi German-occupied Poland call it a ‘Polish concentration camp. – Rep. Chris Smith, Chairman of the U.S. Helsinki Commission, Press Release, July 29, 2011, (http://www.romea.cz/en/news/world/u-s-helsinki-commission-welcomes-recognition-of-romani-victims-of-nazi-genocide-urges-other-european-nations-to-act)
  • From The Guardian:“The files establish that some of the first demands for justice came from countries that had been invaded, such as Poland…”  and“The Polish government in exile, the files also record, supplied extraordinarily detailed descriptions to the UNWCC of concentration camps such as Treblinka and Auschwitz, where millions of Jews were gassed. The accounts had been smuggled out of occupied eastern Europe. A charge sheet from April 1944 mention victims being forced to strip off clothing and how “the terracotta floors in the chambers … became very slippery when wet.”
  • From The New York Times (Dec. 11, 1942):

    POLES ASK ALLIES TO HALT SLAUGHTER; Report Germans Have Slain One-Third of 3,130,000 Jewish Population END OF NATION IS FEARED Note Charges Extermination of Entire Polish People Is Nazis’ Objective

  • Appeal to the UN by the Polish foreign minister:https://ipn.gov.pl/pl/aktualnosci/47587,Prezentacja-reprintu-tzw-Noty-Raczynskiego-podczas-wystawy-Europa-w-rodzinie-Lon.htmlhttps://msz.gov.pl/en/ministry/polish_diplomacy_archive/75th_anniversary_of__raczynski_s_note_
  • German Association of Historians (Verband der Historiker und Historikerinnen Deutschlands) rejects the false term “Polish concentration camps”