Foreign Ministry against False Terminology

The film “Upside Down” by Canada-based Violetta Kardynal will be the next element of the campaign. The documentary is to be presented for the first time on November 11 and then distributed by Polish embassies around the world.The film already is accessible on the Foreign Ministry’s web site. Kardynal deals with the subject by showing sequences from the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps, the opinions of students about the death camps and the views of people who survived the Holocaust.The elders in the film are stunned by the lack of historical knowledge shown by the younger generation. Some of the students of the best schools pictured in the film do not seem to know who the Nazis were.

When asked who built the death camps in Poland a typical reply was: “These were Polish camps, so the Polish people did it.”Film director Kardynal says the level of falsifying history has reached a “critical point” on the American continent. The aim of the film is to shock and shake the audience and make them think.In recent years the Foreign Ministry has complained to numerous newspapers around the world after they had used misleading terms in describing the Nazi concentration camps located in occupied Poland during the war.

Offenders included some of the most respected newspapers in the UK, U.S., Germany and other countries: New York Times, Washington Post, Der Spiegel, Die Welt, Guardian, Ha’aretz and many others. In January 2006, the New York Times issued new guidelines for its journalists after a massive e-mail reaction from Polish readers protesting the misleading terms in the paper.The ministry also launched a special report called “Against Polish Camps” in the English section of its web site www.msz.gov.pl. Reports on the false terminology in the media as well as reliable information on the Holocaust are presented there.