Concentration camp wasn't 'Polish'

The Nov. 12, 2008, story headlined "New Holocaust museum aims to preserve the past," features a picture of Mr. Samuel Harris with the caption: "Holocaust survivor Samuel Harris of Kildeer stands by the type of German rail car that transported him to a Polish concentration camp."

Writing as the son of a former inmate of Auschwitz, I'm wondering if my father would have called the camp he was locked up in "Polish." None of the guards were Polish. None of the administrators were Polish. The camp was not built until 1940, after the Germans invaded and partitioned the country with their Soviet allies in 1939. The first inmates were Poles.

So I am curious, why would the Daily Herald refer to a concentration camp in German-occupied Poland as "Polish"?

It's easy to forget that others suffered at the hands of the Nazis, too. My father was lucky to survive Auschwitz and Mauthausen. But many others from Poland weren't so lucky. Museums like to overlook this fact.

Mark Sokolowski

Chicago