Describing death camps

Published: 17 June, 2011

• WE would remind those either unaware of the facts or careless in their choice of words, that Auschwitz-Birkenau and other death camps were conceived, built and operated by Nazi Germany and its allies.

In your review  (Candid cameraman,  June 10) concerning A Life Rewound: Memoirs of a Freelance Producer and Director, by Peter Morley, there is a serious errors.

During World War II, the Nazi Germans set up six extermination centres in occupied Poland and murdered millions of Jews there. Although it would seem natural to use the expression “German death camps” or “death camps in German-occupied Poland” when speaking of these tragic events, some people seem to regard this as less than obvious.

The reference to Auschwitz or any other of those camps as a “Polish concentration camp” is insulting.

By international agreement, the correct phrase is “Nazi German concentration camp”.

There were no Polish Nazis. There was no Polish branch of the Nazi Party. 

JAN NIECHWIADOWICZ
Rimini House, Cardiff