| Auschwitz by Any Other Name |
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| Written by Aaron Greenblatt | |||||
| Wednesday, 17 May 2006 | |||||
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In late March, Poland appealed to UNESCO, the United Nation’s educational and cultural body, to change the official name of “Auschwitz Concentration Camp” to “Former Nazi Germany Concentration Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.” According to a March 30th AP news brief, “Polish officials complain that foreign media sometimes refer to Auschwitz as a ‘Polish Concentration camp.’” In addition, it said, “Younger generations decreasingly associate Auschwitz-Birkenau with the criminal activities of the nationalist-socialist German Nazi regime.” Poland’s intention at historical clarification is, of course, legitimate, but it strikes some as a bit ironic that they appeal to the world’s cultural and educational body for a quick-fix solution that does not address the core issue: how the world transmits knowledge of the Holocaust. Polish officials say they sincerely care about the Polish reputation regarding the Holocaust. In the end, it’s not just a matter of semantics, for as New York Times columnist Thomas L. Freidman writes in a March 22 article: “To name something is to own it. If you name something, get that name to stick, you thereby define how people think about an issue.”
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