This
unfortunate phrase has a history almost as long as the Nazi camps in Poland.
In Poland?
That’s the problem! The country was defeated in September 1939 by the Germans and the Soviets and there was no Polish territory, there. It was partitioned between Germany or The 3rd Reich and Russia or the Soviet Union.
Technically,
then, those camps were on German territory.
Shouldn't we, subsequently, use the term German or Nazi concentration camps? Yes, I very strongly believe we
should, and we do. I also believe that we should
use and continue using the German names of those places to make very clear to
the whole World who committed those atrocities.
The genocide, the holocaust was planned, executed and committed by the
Germans! If so, don’t you think that
words like Auschwitz and Birkenau better describe what happened there and by
whom?
Let’s
now imagine somebody, who wants to visit these places. Auschwitz, Birkenau – how come we are not
going to Germany, why is it in Poland now?
Why do they use German names? How
come they call it German concentration camps if they are in Poland? The reasoning is straightforward; if they are
in Poland, they are Polish.
There
is no easy way out of this situation.
It’s just easier to say Polish camps, meaning either run by the Polish
or on the Polish territory. Since they
are in Poland and the word Polish also means Polish people, it’s easy to make
wrong assumptions and jump to erroneous conclusions.
Yes,
there are people who use and abuse this situation, which principally may be resulting
from English grammar. No, President
Obama is not one of them. President Obama
simply used the grammatically correct speech form, which politically, on the
other hand, is completely intolerable.
How
would you get out of this English grammar trap?
Any suggestions?
Peace!
No comments:
Post a Comment