German broadcaster ordered to apologize to Auschwitz survivor for calling Nazi camps ‘Polish’
Published December 26, 2016
(JTA) — A German public broadcasting station must apologize to a survivor of Auschwitz for calling the Nazi death camps “Polish death camps.”
An appeals court in Krakow, Poland, announced the ruling on Thursday.
Ninety-five year old Polish Holocaust survivor Karol Tendera filed the lawsuit against the ZDF broadcaster over a 2013 promotional trailer for a documentary about the liberation of Auschwitz and Majdanek, which described them as Polish death camps, though Nazi Germany set up and ran the camps.
“Every Pole won’t necessarily be offended but the plaintiff was. He went from being a victim to the culprit” because of the erroneous wording, the judge wrote in his ruling, the AFP French news agency reported.
A lower court had dismissed the case, citing two explanatory letters written to Tendera by the broadcaster.
The appeals court ordered the broadcaster to publish its apology for a month on its website.
