Poland Fears World Forgets Auschwitz Was Nazi Camp

Poland - Six decades after the Holocaust, Poland fears the world is forgetting Nazi Germany was responsible for the wartime concentration camps meant to wipe out European Jewry.

Warsaw takes the issue so seriously that it has started a campaign to ensure the phrase "Nazi German concentration camp" is used in reference to Auschwitz. Newspapers writing "Polish death camps" promptly get a sharp protest letter from the local Polish embassy to the editor.

Part of the reason for the use of "Polish death camps" is geographical confusion, historians say. The passage of time means fewer people know the Nazis set up their death camps in occupied areas far from Germany itself, probably to hide the horrors of the Holocaust.

Auschwitz is the largest of the camps in present-day Poland. Among the others were Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka.