President Barack Obama has written a letter to the Polish president expressing "regret" for his earlier inadvertent reference to the erroneous term "Polish death camp".
Obama on Tuesday used the expression "a Polish death camp" while honoring Polish World War II resistance hero Jan Karski, instead of referring to the camp as one operated by the Nazis in Poland during the war.
Warsaw has been waging a campaign for years against phrases such as "Polish death camps" or "Polish concentration camps" to refer to Auschwitz, Treblinka and other German killing sites. Obama’s verbal gaffe caused a storm of controversy in Poland. For days, Obama's words have dominated the news in Poland. Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the entire Polish nation felt affected.
"We always react in the same way when ignorance, lack of knowledge, bad intentions lead to such a distortion of history, so painful for us here in Poland, in a country which suffered like no other in Europe during World War II," Tusk said Wednesday.
"In referring to “a Polish death camp” rather than `a Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland,' I inadvertently used a phrase that has caused many Poles anguish over the years and that Poland has rightly campaigned to eliminate from public discourse around the world," Obama wrote. "I regret the error and agree that this moment is an opportunity to ensure that this and future generations know the truth."
"I regret the error and agree that this moment is an opportunity to ensure that this and future generations know the truth," Obama wrote to Komorowski in the letter dated May 31.
"The correspondence received today is an important and a very necessary gesture by the U.S. President," Komorowski told a news conference, Reuters reported on Friday. "In my view, it's a letter from our important ally and a good friend."
