The France 24 international news station has referred to the WW II Sobibor Nazi extermination camp as a ‘Polish concentration camp’ in one of its news bulletins.

The French journalist spoke of the deportation, Tuesday, of suspected Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk from the USA to Munich to stand trial, saying that he is alleged to have murdered 29,000 Jews in the ‘Polish concentration camp’ of Sobibor, which was located in the south east of Poland during WW II.

The misnaming of Nazi death camps in Poland as “Polish” has been a constant feature of reports in many news media over the years.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Piotr Paszkowski has commented that such incorrect statements appear in the world’s media “almost everyday”. The foreign ministry web page even has a special section, ‘Against Polish camps’, which describes all the interventions of the ministry in such cases.

The ministry says that when reports use “Polish death camps”, “Polish concentration camps”, or, in a recent news report by The Sun (UK), “Polish gas chambers,” it appeals to editors to correct the mistake.

Such statements, said Paszkowski, are not only wrong and unjust but also harmful to Poland and its citizens.

In 2007, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee approved a request by the Polish government to formally change the name of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp to, "Auschwitz-Birkenau: the Nazi German Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945)”.  (ab/pg)