Poles remain shocked and angry about President Obama’s gaffe, calling a Nazi concentration camp in Poland a ‘Polish Death Camp.’ They are adamant that President Obama must apologize personally and they are mystified about why he hasn’t. In this statement from Poland’s Dziennik newspaper, Polish member of the European Parliament and former Foreign Minister Anna Fotyga calls on Poles around the world to contact the president of the United States and the U.S. ambassador to Poland to make their displeasure abundantly clear.
For Dziennik, Polish member of the European Parliament Anna Fotyga starts out this way:
“On behalf of many Poles, I wanted to express my great, my deepest regret, at what happened yesterday. The statement made by President Obama has done tremendous harm to Poles and the Polish Diaspora. Hence my opinion that a statement by the president himself is required – because to have a White House aide simply say that it was inaccurate or that the president misspoke is insufficient considering the harm that has been done.
“[Foreign] Minister Sikorski and the rest of the government of [Prime Minister] Donald Tusk decided that a representative of the government would accept the Presidential Medal of Freedom for great Polish patriot Jan Karski. I think many of you saw how helplessly former Foreign Minister Rotfeld stood there. I do not think that was a good decision. Accepted custom in all countries is to have heirs accept such a prize. I believe that the family of the late Jan Karski would have known how to react in such a situation.
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