Polish death camp controversy

"Polish death camp" and "Polish concentration camp" are misleading and improper terms that have been used in international media, and by public figures, in reference to concentration camps built and run by Nazi Germany in the General Government and other parts of occupied Poland during World War II.

The use of these terms has led to a significant controversy and has been strongly objected by many Polish organizations and officials. This usage has been described as insulting by The Polish foreign minister Adam Daniel Rotfeld (himself a Jewish Holocaust survivor) in 2005, who also alleged that – intentionally or unintentionally – it shifted the responsibility for the design, planning, construction or operation of the camps from the German to the Polish people. The use of these terms, explicitly mentioning "Poland" or "Polish", has been discouraged by the Polish and Israeli governments, Polish diaspora organizations around the world, and Jewish organizations such as the American Jewish Committee.

After the German invasion of Poland, unlike in most European countries occupied by Nazi Germany, where the Germans sought and found true collaborators among the locals, in occupied Poland there was no official collaboration either at the political or at the economic level. Poland never officially surrendered to the Germans and instead, maintained a government-in-exile along with its own military force abroad fighting against them. Historians generally agree that there was little collaboration with the Nazis by individual Poles in comparison with other German-occupied countries.

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Wikipedia