The Kosciuszko Foundation has posted a petition on its website, demanding that the media stop using historically erroneous terms "Polish concentration camps and Polish death camps to describe Auschwitz and other Nazi extermination camps built by the Germans during World War II." 

By December 15, 2010, over 159000 persons and organizations had signed. Poland's President Bronislaw Komorowski signed the petition on December 10, during his brief visit to the United States. More and more people are signing it. 

The Petition reads:

WHEREAS the media uses the historically erroneous terms "Polish concentration camp" and "Polish death camp" to describe Auschwitz and other Nazi extermination camps built by the Germans during World War II, which confuses impressionable and undereducated readers, leading them to believe that the Holocaust was executed by Poland, rather than Nazi Germany,

WHEREAS these phrases are Holocaust revisionism that desecrate the memories of six million Jews from 27 countries who were murdered by Nazi Germany,

WHEREAS Poland was the first country invaded by Germany, and the only country whose citizens suffered the death penalty for rescuing Jews, yet never surrendered during six years of German occupation, even though one-sixth of its population was killed in the war, approximately half of which was Christian,

WHEREAS educated journalists must know these facts and not cross the libel threshold of malice by using phrases such as "Polish concentration camps."

BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED that the undersigned request that The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Associated Press, and TIME magazine include entries in their stylebooks requiring news stories to be historically accurate, using the official name of all "German concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Poland," as UNESCO did in 2007 when it named the camp in Auschwitz, "The Auschwitz-Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945)."

To sign this petition, or to see all the signatures, please go to the web site: www.thekf.org/events/news/petition/

Information: PI
December 15, 2010