Chelsea FC seek to educate racist offenders but triggers an avalanche of “Polish camps” in the UK media

Roman Abramovich, owner of the Chelsea football club, and Bruce Buck, club’s chairman, said they want to offer fans a learning opportunity instead of simply banning supporters who commit anti-Semitic or racist acts.  The educational programme should include visits to the former Nazi German Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945) Auschwitz-Birkenau. 

Chelsea’s initiative drew attention of numerous British media which, unfortunately, fell into the trap of calling the German camp a “Polish camp.”

Polish Media Issues sent numerous letters of protest to British press and we asked also Steve Atkins, Director of Communications and Public Affairs at Chelsea Football Club to make sure that all editorial errors are corrected and football fans learn that Auschwitz was a site of annihilation by Nazi Germany of Jews, ethnic Poles, and thousands of individuals from other nations. Please see our letter to Mr. Atkins:

  

Attn: Mr. Steve Atkins
Director of Communications and Public Affairs at Chelsea Football Club

Dear Sir,

We refer to the initiative of the Chelsea Football Club to educate racist Chelsea fans about the genocide of Jews in the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz, presently a Memorial and Museum, located in Poland. Your initiative is applaudable, although it would be much better to ask your fans to visit the former German death camps in Germany first, as it were Germans and not Poles who were the authors of the genocide (for instance: kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de or ravensbrueck.de).

Unfortnately, numerous British media (probably due to an editorial error of Press Association) used a historically false and offensive term “Polish camp” in respect to Auschwitz, thus strengthening a totally unfair stereotype of “Polish camps”:

• https://www.newsweek.com/auschwitz-chelsea-racist-anti-semitic-fans-trip-nazi-ban-concentration-camp-1165019
• https://www.metro.news/backing-for-chelsea-trip-to-auschwitz/1265636/
• https://www.redditchadvertiser.co.uk/sport/national/16976543.chelsea-seek-to-educate-racist-offenders/
• https://www.football365.com/news/chelsea-to-educate-rather-than-ban-racist-offenders

We remind you that ethnic Poles were the first victims of Auschwitz (about 70,000 of them were killed at the hands of Germans). Altogether, Poland lost almost 20% of her citizens during WWII (actually, Hitler planned to exterminate almost all Poles, and the survivors were to be used as slave labour for the German Herrenrasse). It is very painful for Poles to be exposed today to the term “Polish camp” in the media.

The correct name of the former German death camp Auschwitz is, according to UNESCO’s definition: Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945)- https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/31.

We would like to emphasize also that shifting the blame for German death camps on other nations is, according to IHRA’s definition, a Holocaust denial: https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/working-definition-holocaust-denial-and-distortion (pls see point 5 of the definition).

We hope you will understand our concern and would like to ask you to clear the issue with editors of the media which used the offensive term “Polish camp”. Please inform all your fans that there was no such thing like “Polish camps” but “German death and concentration camps” in occupied Europe. Germans were perpetrators, Poles were victims.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

Polish Media Issues