German Camps, Polish Victims: The BBC coverage of German-occupied Poland By Jan Niechwiadowicz And The Polish Media Issues group First published in 2012 by Support Poland Limited 49, Castle Rise, Rumney, Cardiff CF3 4BB, Wales www.supportpoland.org www.germancampspolishvictims.info Copyright © 2012 Jan Niechwiadowicz ISBN 978-1-909028-00-5 (Hard) ISBN 978-1-909028-01-2 (Soft) ISBN 978-1-909028-02-9 (e-Book) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in electronic form, or transmitted, in any form or by any means including photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of Support Poland Limited or the Polish Media Issues group. Contents Contents ............................................................................................................................................ 7 Summary ........................................................................................................................................... 9 Foreword ........................................................................................................................................... 9 Acknowledgement ........................................................................................................................... 10 Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 11 BBC commitment not to use ‘Polish camp’ terminology ................................................................... 13 What is the correct term for the German camps in occupied Poland? ........................................... 15 Poland was occupied during World War Two ................................................................................... 16 BBC coverage of the Channel Islands in WWII .............................................................................. 17 BBC coverage of France in WWII .................................................................................................. 17 BBC coverage of the Poland in WWII ............................................................................................ 18 The location and ethnicity of the crimes ........................................................................................... 18 Other crimes in ‘Poland’ ............................................................................................................... 18 Ethnicity of the criminals.............................................................................................................. 19 The camps without Germans ....................................................................................................... 19 BBC audience’s knowledge of WWII ................................................................................................. 20 Ethnic Poles were victims in the German camps ............................................................................... 21 Comparison to others who suffered ............................................................................................. 21 Effects on the BBC audience ............................................................................................................. 22 Focus of the report .......................................................................................................................... 22 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 23 Recommendations ........................................................................................................................... 23 References ...................................................................................................................................... 25 Appendix A – BBC description of the German camps in occupied Poland ......................................... 27 Appendix B – Others using the BBC to describe the German camps ................................................. 28 Appendix C – Other misleading terms used on the BBC website....................................................... 29 Appendix D – Data on Channel Islands ............................................................................................. 30 Appendix E – Data on Poland ........................................................................................................... 34 Appendix F – Data on Germany ....................................................................................................... 44 Appendix G – Expert opinion on the naming of the camps ............................................................... 45 Appendix H – Data on France........................................................................................................... 51 Appendix I – Prisoner of War camps in German-occupied Poland .................................................... 56 Appendix J – Pogroms in Poland ...................................................................................................... 57 Appendix K – Pogroms outside Poland ............................................................................................. 58 Glossary .......................................................................................................................................... 60 Index ............................................................................................................................................... 61 German Camps, Polish Victims: The BBC coverage of German-occupied Poland Summary This report outlines three key issues with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and their coverage of German-occupied Poland in World War II (WWII). Specifically, that they have failed to live up to their commitment not to use insulting terms that imply Poles were responsible for the German concentration and death camps. Poland is treated differently to other countries when it comes to describing the occupation and responsibility for the crimes committed. Finally, the BBC regularly fails to list Poles as victims in the German camps when in fact they constituted the second largest number of victims. Foreword David Jan Niechwiadowicz is a United Kingdom (UK) based member of the Polonia currently living in Wales. He works for a university‘s internal computer department and before that for various companies as an IT consultant specialising in business intelligence and high-end database sectors. For the last seven years, Jan has, in his spare time, acted as moderator of the Polish Media Issues (PMI) group. This group has tried to deal with more than 1,000 media issues. Most of these media issues are related to the Second World War. This has placed Jan in a unique position to use the data record over these years to produce a series of reports on the media and their coverage of Poland. Jan has presented two lectures on related topics: My six year fight against the expression “Polish Concentration Camps” and Negative stereotypes of Poles in the UK. He is currently working on the next report, which looks at the British national newspapers and their coverage of German-occupied Poland. Jan was awarded Człowiek Roku (Man of the Year) by Dziennik Polski and their patron the Polish Embassy in the United Kingdom for his work in combating poor media coverage against Poles and Poland. Further details can be found at www.germancampspolishvictims.info including copies of his previous work and details of his planned future work. Page 9 of 64 Join the fight, join the Polish Media Issues group – [email protected] Acknowledgement This report and its printing could not have been possible without the sponsorship of AMOPOD, Bożena Karol, Małgorzata Tarchała, Elizabeth Niechwiadowicz and Support Poland Limited. My thanks go to Danuta Janina Wójcik and Małgorzata Tarchała for the photographs. Further I am very grateful to Polskie Studio for the logo design and for building the website. Finally, appreciation must go to those who contributed their ideas, checked the statistics and proofread the material, especially Włodzimierz Mier-Jędrzejowicz, Jan Mokrzycki, Elizabeth Niechwiadowicz, Robert Szaniawski, Peter Browne, Tara Foss, Bob Lamming, Victor Woldanowski and Marek Laskiewicz. Page 10 of 64 German Camps, Polish Victims: The BBC coverage of German-occupied Poland Introduction This is the first of a series of reports on how the media cover German-occupied Poland during WWII, especially about the camps imposed on Poland. This report focuses on the suffering of ethnic Poles, but hopefully future booklets will look at how other Polish citizens, such as Polish Jews are portrayed. The BBC is the one of the largest and most important media organisations in the world. As a result, it was selected as the subject of the first report. The focus is on the BBC website and how it portrays crimes committed by Germans in occupied Poland, especially the Nazi German death camps, and how they depict the occupation of Poland and whether Poles are named as victims in the camps. Germany was responsible for suffering on an almost unbelievable scale including the Jewish Holocaust and the atrocities in the German concentration camps. Despite this being an historical fact, it is increasingly being said that Poles were responsible for the Holocaust or took an active part in causing the suffering of others. Some experts covering the history of WWII have even noted that the Germans have all but been replaced by