Polish Death Camps

It was doubtless an innocent mistake. The President didn't mean to offend Poles, nor did he mean to imply that WWII era extermination camps were operated by Poles. The only reason I even mention it is to show the hypocrisy of the Democrats and their media supporters who would be absolutely skewering George Bush had he made such a gaffe. We would never hear the end of it just as we still hear about Gerald Ford's "liberation of Eastern Europe", Dan Quayle's "potatoe", etc.

We also have been hearing, and will be hearing, about every error and faux pas committed by Mitt Romney from now until November. Each one will be held up as proof that Mr. Romney is intellectually unqualified to lead the nation's international affairs, but those who'll be promoting this meme will doubtless ignore Mr. Obama's howlers.

It seems that it could go without saying that no one who voted for a community organizer who assured us that he had campaigned in "all 57 states" (with one to go and two that he won't be visiting for a total of 60 states), and who offends an entire nation by referring to the "Polish death camps" should criticize anyone else's suitability and qualification to lead the nation.

Here's part of ABC's report on the story:

Poles and Polish-Americans expressed outrage today at President Obama’s reference earlier to “a Polish death camp” — as opposed to a Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland.

“The White House will apologize for this outrageous error,” Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski tweeted. Sikorski said that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk “will make a statement in the morning. It’s a pity that this important ceremony was upstaged by ignorance and incompetence.”

The president had been trying to honor a famous Pole, awarding a Presidential Medal of Freedom to Jan Karski, a resistance fighter who sneaked behind enemy lines to bear witness to the atrocities being committed against Jews. President Obama referred to him being smuggled “into the Warsaw ghetto and a Polish death camp to see for himself.”

Sikorski also tonight tweeted a link to an Economist story noting that “few things annoy Poles more than being blamed for the crimes committed by the Nazi occupiers of their homeland. For many years, Polish media, diplomats and politicians have tried to persuade outsiders to stop using the phrase ‘Polish death camps’ as a shorthand description of Auschwitz and other exemplars of Nazi brutality and mass murder. Unfortunately this seems to have escaped Barack Obama’s staff [who] seem not to have noticed this.”

There's more on the Polish reaction to Mr. Obama's unfortunate blunder at the link.