Letter from Prof. Pogonowski to President Obama regarding "Polish Concentration Camps"

To President Barack Obama
The White House

Dear Mr President:

Thank you for decorating a personal friend of mine, Jan Kozielewski-Karski with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I am 90 years old Polish-Catholic veteran of five-years imprisonment in the German Concentration Camp in Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen near Berlin. After the war I met professor Jan Karski in Caracas Venezuela and later I was several times his guest in Washington. I wrote about Dr. Karski in my book "Jews in Poland" (Hippocrene Books. Inc. New York 1993).

I am writing this letter in Florida where, a large and growing Polish community is slowly catching up with Pennsylvania, Illinois and Wisconsin. Polish Americans believe that the medal is well deserved by Dr. Karski.

Your unfortunate description of German-Nazi death camp in Poland as a "Polish death camp" is offending to Polish Americans aware that Poles did not collaborate with the Nazis in running the country, much less in the Holocaust. The use of the phrase "Polish Death Camp" is insulting and shameful.

Dear President Obama, I have also noticed that you are the first post-war president of the United States, who during the observation of the D-Day in France, failed to mention the very important contribution of the Polish Armored Division at Falaise, France, during the battle for Normandy in 1944.

Polish Americans are also surprised by the fact that your Secretary of State Mrs. Hillary Clinton, officially and repeatedly insists that Polish victims of war pay Jewish victims of war for damages inflicted on the Jews by the Nazi-Germans and the Soviets.

I want to bring to your attention that recently the names of Polish-American generals, heroes of the War for American Independence, Casimir Pulaski and Thaddeus Kościuszko were recently removed from Amercan history high school text books. I hope you will consider to intervene and correct this situation.

Respectfully yours,
Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski
Anti-Defamation Committee of
Polish-Amercan Association of Sarasota Florida
988 Boulevard of the Arts
Sarasota, FL 34236

Prof. Pogonowski
Born Sept. 3, 1921, Lwów, Poland. In Dec 1939 left Warsaw. Dec 30, 1939 arrested by Ukrainians serving the Gestapo in Dukla, then transferred to Barwinek, Krosno, Jaslo, Tarnów, Oswiecim, arrived in Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen on Aug. 10, 1940. April 19, 1945 started on the Death March of Brandenburg from Sachsenhausen, escaped gunfire of SS-guards and arrived to Schwerin and freedom on May 2, 1945.