Will Time Magazine now say Hitler was a Frenchman?

Why?  Because TIME showed an inclination to follow in the path of other
media giants like Associated Press, N.Y. Times and The Wall St. Journal
in a strange and misleading way of reporting on Holocaust history.
 
On their pages, some of Hitler’s victims are made to look like the perpetrators.
 
In its 11-29 issue (Brief History) TIME made reference to the Sobibor death
camp as “Poland’s death camp.”  But, in fact, it was Germany’s camp not
Poland’s.
 
The Germans established and operated the camp during their occupation of
Poland in World War II.  Jews were the primary victims the Germans
murdered there but Poles and others also died alongside the Jews.
 
“Nowhere else is Holocaust history as distorted and as misrepresented as
it is about Poland,” said Michael Preisler, co-chair of the Holocaust
Documentation Committee of the Polish American Congress.
 
“TIME just gave us a clear example how such misrepresentations are done
and how the Polish people get blamed for the atrocities the Germans
committed,” he said.
 
For many years, Preisler and his committee have been protesting what he
calls “the ugly travesty” of the media’s efforts to avoid using the word
“German” in their stories about the concentration camps the Germans
operated in Poland.
 
As a Polish Catholic who survived more than three years as a prisoner
of the Germans in Auschwitz, it appears he has good reason to become
upset when a Polish label is put on a German crime.
 
The explanation Preisler and his committee usually get after they send
their protest to an offending newspaper or magazine is that the writer
said the camp was “Polish” instead of “German” because the camp was
geographically located in Poland.
 
The Polish American Congress considers this type of answer nothing
more than a “lame excuse.” Why would the location of the camp be more
important information than being told who operated the camp and did
the killing inside it?
 
“There were German concentration camps in Germany.  There were
German concentration camps in Poland.  A German concentration
camp in Poland was still a German concentration camp and Sobibor
was Germany’s not Poland’s,” the report stated.
 
“When we see such convoluted reasoning in the media, then TIME
Magazine might as well say Hitler became a Frenchman when he left
Germany and went to Paris to congratulate his generals for their
victory over France in 1940.”
 
Contact:  Frank Milewski
(516) 352-7125
pacdny@verizon.net