During his speech delivered to the Jewish Community Centre in Kraków King Charles III named victims of the German genocide. Among the Jews, Roma-Sinti and LGBT community there was no place to mention over 70,000 Poles killed in Auschwitz for whom the camps were initially created as extermination sites for patriots, members of the intelligentsia and even teenage Polish scouts.

“It is a moment when we recall the six million Jews, old and young, who were systematically murdered, together with Sinti, Roma, disabled people, members of the L.G.B.T. community, political prisoners, and so many others upon whom the Nazis inflicted their violence and hatred,” the King said while addressing the JCC community in Kraków.

Unfortunately, the Polish were not named as victims despite the 3 million Jews killed during the Holocaust being Polish citizens, as well as another 3 million other Poles who were killed during the occupation for aiding Jews or opposing the occupation laws of Nazi Germany.

Polish victims of Auschwitz and the Holocaust were not named by King Charles during his visit to the Auschwitz German death camp site. 

As reminded by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance Poles were the second-largest inmate group (nearly 200,000) and victim group (over 70,000) in KL Auschwitz, a German camp specifically designed as a camp for Poles, and only later turned into a facility exterminating Jews and many other groups. 

Source: IPN

Photo: X @WJRelief

Tomasz Modrzejewski