Obama’s Death Camp Blunder Leaves Poland Outraged

By: Rachel Pulaski

On September 1, 1939 Adolf Hitler ordered Germany to invade Poland. Hilter established over 400 death and concentration camps in Poland including Auschwitz where the first gas chamber was installed. Over 6 million Polish citizens including 3 million Polish Jews were killed during WWII.

On Tuesday President Obama held a ceremony honoring 13 Medal of Freedom recipients including Jan Karski, a resistance freedom fighter who fought against the Nazi occupation in Poland. While honoring Karski the President shocked Poles all over the world by referring to the Nazi death camps in Poland as “Polish Death Camps”. CBS News reported:

During an East Room ceremony honoring 13 Medal of Freedom recipients, Obama said that Karski “served as a courier for the Polish resistance during the darkest days of World War II. Before one trip across enemy lines, resistance fighters told him that Jews were being murdered on a massive scale and smuggled him into the Warsaw Ghetto and a Polish death camp to see for himself. Jan took that information to President Franklin Roosevelt, giving one of the first accounts of the Holocaust and imploring to the world to take action.” (Watch video of the event at left)

Sikorski tweeted that the White House should apologize for “this outrageous error” and that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk would address the matter on Wednesday. “It’s a pity that such a dignified ceremony was overshadowed by ignorance and incompetence.”

Alex Storozynski, president of the Kosciuszko Foundation, said Obama’s comment “shocked the Poles present at the White House and those watching on C-SPAN. … Karski would have cringed if he heard this.”

National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said: “The president misspoke. He was referring to Nazi death camps in Poland. We regret this misstatement, which should not detract from the clear intention to honor Mr. Karski and those brave citizens who stood on the side of human dignity in the face of tyranny.”

Fox News reported on Poland’s reaction:

Donald Tusk said he was accepting a White House explanation that Obama misspoke but was still waiting for a “stronger, more pointed reaction” that could eliminate the phrasing “once and for all.” Tusk said it was a “matter of the U.S.’s reputation.” He hinted it should include facts about Nazi Germany’s brutal occupation of Poland.

This is not the first time Poland has received a slap in the face by this administration. In 2009 Obama denied a missile defense shield for Poland after Russia threatened military action.
The Poles were great allies to the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe that’s why he hates them?

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Danish TV unmasks Obama's empty rethoric

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No media bias at all. None whatsoever

Daily Mail

Gay rights campaigners in Poland yesterday condemned a court ruling allowing a far-right group to formally register a 'no gay sex' symbol as its official logo.

A judge allowed the small National Rebirth of Poland (NOP) party to register the homophobic symbol in a little noticed decision at the end of October.

The symbol - a stylised representation of gay sex with a red line crossing it - has provoked horror among gay rights campaigners in the country.

Homophobic: Polish far-right activists wave placards denouncing homosexuality during a protest in 2009. Polish gay rights campaigners have slammed a court ruling allowing a group to formally register a homophobic symbol its logo

'Such symbols tap directly into fascist, neo-fascist and xenophobic traditions, and intolerance,' said Robert Biedron, Poland's first openly gay MP, told reporters, according to AFP.

Mr Biedron, who is one of Poland's most prominent gay rights campaigners and newly elected as part of the country's left-wing opposition, urged the justice ministry to step in.

The gay community in Poland has in the past told of living amid a 'climate of fear'.

Opinion polls in the country - where over 90 per cent of the population is Roman Catholic - show two out of three Poles opppose gay rights demonstrations.

Fascist: The NOP also won the right to use the Celtic Cross - an internationally recognised symbol of neofascism

The NOP, which turns out regularly to oppose gay rights rallies, has been back in the spotlight after clashing with police during Poland's Independence Day celebrations on November 11.

The group hailed the court ruling, which also allowed it to adopt the Celtic cross - an international symbol of the far-right and neofascism.

It said on its website the decision had capped a two-year legal fight.

But Grzegorz Schetyna, a senior politician with Civic Platform, Poland's ruling cerntrist group, accused the judge who took the decision of failing in his duties.

AFP reported Mr Schetyna telling Polish station Radio Zet that 'such symbols are unacceptable.'

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Abortion: Poland Stands Firm on the Side of Science and Humanity

By Hilary White

GENEVA, June 7, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Officials of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva have launched a full-scale attack on Poland’s pro-life laws. Poland protects the right to conscientious objection for health care workers and the rights of the Catholic Church.

Pat Buckley, European officer for the United Kingdom’s Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) said that the 14th session of the Human Rights Council sitting this week “promises to be lively.”

A report submitted to the council by Anand Grover, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on health care rights, includes what Buckley called a “radical and comprehensive attack on Poland’s pro-life position on access to abortion, conscientious objection, contraception and sex education.”

Poland, Malta, and the Republic of Ireland are the last countries in the European Union to retain specific and effective protections for unborn children. These countries have been placed in the direct line of fire for abortion activists within the UN and the EU.

SPUC director John Smeaton called the report “mendacious” in its use of abortion lobby groups who provided “expert witness” that pro-life and conscientious objection laws for health care workers are a threat to the rights of women.

In his report, Grover cited a complaint by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) that Poland’s laws conflicted with their obligations under article 12 of the UN’s Convention to protect women’s equal right to access health care services. The report did not mention that CEDAW is one of the UN’s most active abortion lobbying organizations. In fact, CEDAW regularly insists that countries around the world eliminate pro-life legal protections.

Grover’s report quoted CEDAW as calling for “concrete measures to enhance women’s access to health care, in particular to sexual and reproductive health services” – language that is universally understood to include abortion, contraception and sterilization.

These “services” should include “research on the scope, causes and consequences of illegal abortion and its impact on women’s health and life; measures to ensure women’s access to legal abortion services and against limitation of such access by the use of the conscientious objection clause.”

Grover also quoted a demand made in 2009 by the UN’s Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights that Poland “take all effective measures to ensure that women enjoy their right ... by enforcing the legislation on abortion and implementing a mechanism of timely and systematic referral in cases of conscientious objection.”

The Economic, Social and Cultural Rights committee, Smeaton notes, was blasted two years ago by Northern Irish pro-life leaders for demanding legal abortion in Northern Ireland.

Smeaton wrote, “The ugly face of the culture of death was seen yesterday at the Human Rights Council in Geneva in the following section of Mr Grover's chilling report.”

“Freedom of religion, conscience and thought is to be swept aside in favour of the alleged right to kill unborn children.”

The Polish delegation to the meeting did not back down. Representative Branislav Lysák said that the country’s laws have benefitted both women and children. Infant mortality in Poland has dropped by 71% over the last 2 decades and maternal mortality is down by 82%. These figures match those released recently by the UN showing that Ireland, one of the last countries in the world to totally outlaw abortion, has one of the world’s lowest maternal mortality rates.

Lysák denied that there is such a thing as a universal right to abortion and said that the issue is the exclusive competence of independent states according to numerous international agreements.

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UN Attacks Poland’s Pro-Life Laws at Human Rights Meetings

By Hilary White

GENEVA, June 7, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Officials of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva have launched a full-scale attack on Poland’s pro-life laws. Poland protects the right to conscientious objection for health care workers and the rights of the Catholic Church.

Pat Buckley, European officer for the United Kingdom’s Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) said that the 14th session of the Human Rights Council sitting this week “promises to be lively.”

A report submitted to the council by Anand Grover, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on health care rights, includes what Buckley called a “radical and comprehensive attack on Poland’s pro-life position on access to abortion, conscientious objection, contraception and sex education.”

Poland, Malta, and the Republic of Ireland are the last countries in the European Union to retain specific and effective protections for unborn children. These countries have been placed in the direct line of fire for abortion activists within the UN and the EU.

SPUC director John Smeaton called the report “mendacious” in its use of abortion lobby groups who provided “expert witness” that pro-life and conscientious objection laws for health care workers are a threat to the rights of women.

In his report, Grover cited a complaint by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) that Poland’s laws conflicted with their obligations under article 12 of the UN’s Convention to protect women’s equal right to access health care services. The report did not mention that CEDAW is one of the UN’s most active abortion lobbying organizations. In fact, CEDAW regularly insists that countries around the world eliminate pro-life legal protections.

Grover’s report quoted CEDAW as calling for “concrete measures to enhance women’s access to health care, in particular to sexual and reproductive health services” – language that is universally understood to include abortion, contraception and sterilization.

These “services” should include “research on the scope, causes and consequences of illegal abortion and its impact on women’s health and life; measures to ensure women’s access to legal abortion services and against limitation of such access by the use of the conscientious objection clause.”

Grover also quoted a demand made in 2009 by the UN’s Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights that Poland “take all effective measures to ensure that women enjoy their right ... by enforcing the legislation on abortion and implementing a mechanism of timely and systematic referral in cases of conscientious objection.”

The Economic, Social and Cultural Rights committee, Smeaton notes, was blasted two years ago by Northern Irish pro-life leaders for demanding legal abortion in Northern Ireland.

Smeaton wrote, “The ugly face of the culture of death was seen yesterday at the Human Rights Council in Geneva in the following section of Mr Grover's chilling report.”

“Freedom of religion, conscience and thought is to be swept aside in favour of the alleged right to kill unborn children.”

The Polish delegation to the meeting did not back down. Representative Branislav Lysák said that the country’s laws have benefitted both women and children. Infant mortality in Poland has dropped by 71% over the last 2 decades and maternal mortality is down by 82%. These figures match those released recently by the UN showing that Ireland, one of the last countries in the world to totally outlaw abortion, has one of the world’s lowest maternal mortality rates.

Lysák denied that there is such a thing as a universal right to abortion and said that the issue is the exclusive competence of independent states according to numerous international agreements.

Read More