Even after over fifty years have passed since the atrocities of the Holocaust, the Second World War is still a touchy subject for Poles, and the Auschwitz Concentration Camp is one of the most painful aspects of it. While the camp was located on Polish soil (though at the time that soil had been seized by the Nazis), the Polish government wants to make it one hundred percent clear that it was a German project - even going as far as changing the official name of the camp.
This week, the official title of Auschwitz has been changed to include the word "German". The United Nations cultural organization UNESCO has scrapped the old name from the books and changed the camp's title to the "Auschwitz-Birkenau German Nazi concentration and extermination camp 1940-1945". The outrage and subsequent name change comes from a history of both the media and scholarly publications referring to the camp as "a Polish concentration camp", which is inaccurate as the camp was set up by the occupying Nazis, and its location determined by Hitler himself. The Poles want any doubt of their involvement with the camp stripped. But some think this is a bit too much "dwelling in the past", as German Chancellor Angela Merkel noted; obviously, most people know that the camp was set up by the Nazis, and any mistake in its naming would come from the fact that it was located on Polish soil. Nevertheless, the Polish political climate overall seems to dwell a bit too much in the past and not look to the future enough, and this issue might just be one example of that. |