Auschwitz II-Birkenau gatehouse. The train track, in operation from May to October 1944, led toward the gas chambers. |
Following article by Łukasz Graban, the Consul of the Embassy of Poland in Canberra Felix Molski from Sydney sent to the Australian Press Council his protest against using by main stream media languague suggesting to a broader community that not German Nazzi but Poles bear the guilt od the attrocities in Auschwitz. Poland, a victim of German aggresion lost about 20% of population in the WWII.
W odpowiedzi na apel Konsula Ambasady RP w Canberze Łukasza Grabana Felix Molski z Sydney przesłał do Australian Press Council protest przeciw wciąż pojawiającym się w main stream media sformułowaniom sugerującym szerszej społeczności australijskiej, że to nie Nazistowskie Niemcy są sprawcami zbrodni w Auschwitz a Polska, która padła ofiarą niemieckiej agresjii w II Wojnie światowej i straciła blisko 20% swej populacji.
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.............................................................................................1st May 2024 Australian Press Council PO Box 1014 North Sydney NSW 2059
Dear Australian Press Council
Why do you permit the Weekend Australian weekly columnist Phillip Adams, without sanction, defy the Australian Press Council guidelines to NOT slander people of Polish Heritage? For decades Adams has been proclaimed as being an elite level writer, not only as a Weekly Columnist with The Weekend Australian. but also as a commentator and intellectual with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). So how is it possible for
him to be ignorant of the Australia Press Council quarter century old direction that the highly offensive terminology such as he
chose to use, NOT be used. Since 1999, the Authority has made it easy for him to NOT do this by providing the guideline that an
appropriate description for these German death camps would be "Nazi concentration camps", adding their location as being "in
occupied Poland". I have been led to believe that it is ABC management policy for this guideline to be followed and likewise in
response to previous such slanders written in the Australian, pointed out by a Letter to the Editor to the Australian in April 2015 by
Leszek Wikarjusz [1] , he was assured by Clive Mathieson, The Australian editorial board representative at that time, that:
I have spoken with our editorial team to ensure such a mistake does not happen again.
So did Adams, the elite level commentator and intellectual, repeat the mistake or does he actually believe he is above having to
follow this guideline and instead chose to omit the recommended phrase ‘in occupied Poland’, by writing the following, within his
20th April, 2024, Weekend Australian article titled “I’m declaring war on war. Who’s with me?”
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/weekend-australian-magazine/im-declaring-war-on-war-whos-with-me/news-story/e4fbb1179a4c694457a29628df70b035
. . . And then there’s Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland (emphasis added) – the most monstrous mass grave, war crime, call it
what you will, in human history. If ghosts exist the air must be thick with them at Auschwitz, where so many innocents were
“sent up the chimneys”. In that place is horror beyond horror, beyond explanation, comprehension, imagining. To have lived
through that place is to know the reality of survivor’s guilt. . . .
Noting that the ONLY nation Adams named is Poland, this is highly offensive to me and others with Polish heritage. My Polish
father defended Polish freedom against the invading GERMAN National Socialist aggressors and came out of a GERMAN
National Socialist concentration camp in 1945 just skin and bone, weighing 38kg. My Polish mother had her youth and education
stolen from her when, as a young girl, she was uprooted from her home and family by GERMAN National Socialists and forcibly
taken to Germany and forced to wear a ‘Purple P’ emblem and made to work from dawn to dusk as a Slave on a German farm,
seven days a week, from 1941 to 1945. She was scarred for life by GERMAN people sniggering and laughing, pointing at her
because she was wearing the ‘Polish Purple P’, describing her as an Untermensch (Sub human).
It seems to me that Adams, for decades an Elite Level writer, couldn’t have made a mistake, because as a former supporter of the
Australian Communist Party [2] and later, as described in Quadrant, a ‘pundit, filmmaker, socialist, millionaire’ [3], he prefers not to put
any negative light on Socialists of the past, whether they be GERMAN National Socailists or Soviet Socialists. So instead of using
the Australian Press Council quarter century old direction his chosen terminology deflects the guilt for the atrocities at Auschwitz to
Polish people.
If Mr Adams through his total ignorance of the quarter century old Australian Press Council’s guidelines for this specific issue did
indeed make a genuine blunder in absolving German National Socialists from the heinous Auschwitz-Birkenau atrocities by pointing
the blame to the Polish people, he will no doubt visibly and prominently apologise for his blunder. He will also clearly spotlight the
actual perpetrators of these atrocities as German people and not conceal the German guilt through the term ‘Nazi’ because the
actual atrocity perpetrators repeatedly and proudly identified themselves as German National Socialists.
Felix Molski
[1] 2015-04-27
Leszek Wikarjusz, Letter to the Editor of the Australian (and a response), Puls Polonii
[2] Wikipedia, Phillip Adams (writer)
[3] Informit Phillip Adams, Pundit
PS. I couldn’t make the complaint online because I couldn’t write what I needed to write in just 400 words. I have sent this same
letter of complaint to the Editors of The Australian.
PS. The slander continues | 
