Poland has made an official request to change Auschwitz’s name
29.04.2006
The Polish government made the request last month to change the name of the site from “Auschwitz Death Camp” to “former Nazi German Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp.” It made the request to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which has jurisdiction because the site of the death camp is a U.N. cultural heritage site.
UNESCO is expected to respond by mid-2006.
Poland (6) -- Analyses-- April-June 2006
Auschwitz-Oswiecim
29.04.2006
The debate goes to the heart of the question of how Polish behavior during the Holocaust is remembered.
The camp was set up by the Nazis on the site of a former Polish army barracks on the outskirts of the southern Polish town of Oswiecim — Auschwitz in German.
The name change is intended to stop the description of the camp by the international media, including The New York Times and the German magazine Der Spiegel, as a “Polish death camp,” which greatly offends many Poles because the camp was run by Germany.
“In the years after the war, the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was definitively associated with the criminal activities of the national socialist Nazi regime in Germany. However, for the contemporary, younger generations, especially abroad, that association is not universal,” Culture Ministry spokesman Jan Kasprzyk recently told journalists. “The proposed change in the name leaves no doubt as to what the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp was.”
Bulgarian