The interview with Stanisław Zalewski

The interview with Stanisław Zalewski – KL Auschwitz and Mauthausen (Gusen I, Gusen II) former prisoner, the president of the Polish Association of the Former Political Hitlerian Prisons and Concentration Camps Prisoners to the needs of “International Dialogue of Present-day Ways to Memorialize the Truth About German Genocide in the Territory of the Occupied Poland” project and within “Participation of the Witness of the History in the Project” point. Patria Nostria: Mrs Stanisław, because of the pandemic your plans to meet with the Touro College in Berlin, where you were supposed to tell about your experience from extermination camps and come to the students why the historical truth is so important in the context of who was a victim and who was an executioner during the II World War failed… Stanisław Zalewski: I hope that the meeting will happen, I have a lot to tell to those young people. However, what is the most important at the moment is health. Nevertheless, I am very pleased that youth want to listen about such tough issues. I know from my own experience, that they like when everything is chronologically presented and the path “how it happened” is clearly showed. Patria Nostria: Let’s […]

The main themes and a summary of Attorney Lech Obara’s lecture to be given during the international scientific conference on 26 November 2020.

A brief history of the Patria Nostra Association and its mission The Patria Nostra Association unites former concentration camp prisoners and their descendants, as well as lawyers, scientists, and all those who care about the historical truth.  Attorney Lech Obara is the president of the Association, and Janina Luberda-Zapaśnik, a former prisoner of the concentration camp in Potulice (Lebrechtsdorf), is the vice-president The idea to establish the Patria Nostra Association appeared in 2009. It was established due to the habitual use in international media of phrases constituting “defective memory codes”, such as “the Polish concentration camp”, “ the Polish death camp”, “Polish Nazis”, “Polish crimes against humanity”, “Nazi Poland” or “the Polish Gestapo”. The common use of the term “the Polish extermination camp” or “the Polish concentration camp” leads to a dangerous image for Poland and for the Polish historical policy alike, to the impression in the historical consciousness of foreign societies that it was not the Germans, but the Poles who set up these criminal camps. Since 2004, the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been carrying out diplomatic activities to combat the usage of the phrase “the Polish extermination camp” by international media. Between 2008 and 2017 Polish […]

Touro College Berlin / Patria Nostra Olsztyn Thursday, 26 November 2020 – International Conference

Germany and its crimes in Poland during World War II Deutschland und die Verbrechen in Polen im Zweiten Weltkrieg Niemcy i zbrodnie w Polsce podczas II wojny światowej Knowledge and gaps in knowledge Wissen und Wissenslücken / Wiedza i luki w wiedzy (9:30-12), Chair: Prof. Dr. Stephan Lehnstaedt, Touro College Berlin German school books – Deutsche Schulbücher / Podręczniki szkolne (Prof. Dr. Igor Kąkolewski, CBH PAN Berlin) Public opinion – Die öffentliche Meinung / Opinia publiczna (Dr. Agnieszka Łada, DPI Darmstadt) German research – Deutsche Forschung / Badania niemieckie  (Dr. Daniel Brewing, Aachen) What the Germans should know – Was die Deutschen wissen sollten / Co Niemcy powinni wiedzieć  (Hanna Radziejowska / Dr. Mateusz Fałkowski, Instytut Pileckiego Berlin) Legal questions Juristische Folgen/ Konsekwencje prawne (13-15:30), chair: Kamil Majchrzak, Berlin Criminal persecution in Poland – Strafverfolgung in Polen / Ściganie w Polsce (Dr. Łukasz Jasiński, CBH PAN Berlin) „Polish concentration camps” – „Polnische Konzentrationslager“ / „Polskie obozy koncentracyjne” (mec. Lech Obara, Patria Nostra) Reparations – Reparationen / Reparacje (Prof. Dr. Stanisław Żerko, IZ Poznań) Ghetto pensions – Ghettorenten / Emerytury z ghet (Dr. Jan-Robert von Renesse, Landessozialgericht Essen) Panel discussion: History museums Musealisierung – Diskussionrunde / Muzealisacja – runda dyskusyjna  (16-18), […]

German publisher sues Patria Nostra Association

Norbert Tiemann, editor-in-chief of Westfälische Nachrichten, and the publishing company Aschendorff Medien&Co want to convince the German court that Patria Nostra has no right to demand publication of an apology for the use of the terms “Polish death camps” and claims for damages. Patria Nostra received a notice of suit in this case from the Munster National Court. […]

Communiqué of the Patria Nostra Association on criminal proceedings in Germany concerning crimes committed in the camps Majdanek, Stutthof and Auschwitz

After the German Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe decided that ZDF did not have to apologize to Karol Tendera, a former Auschwitz prisoner, for using the phrase “Polish extermination camps”, Rajmund Niwinski from the team of lawyers from Dusseldorf, Munich (Germany) and Atlanta (USA) contacted the Patria Nostra association. […]

Lech Obara

Communiqué of the Patria Nostra Association in Olsztyn on the constitutional appeal against the decision of the German BGH in the case of Karol Tendera and ZDF

By order dated July 19, 2018, published on August 21, 2018, the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) in Karlsruhe decided that the German television station ZDF did not have to execute the Polish judgment ordering it to apologize to Karol Tendera, a former Auschwitz prisoner, on its main website. In that way, according to the ruling of the Court of Appeal in Krakow, the ZDF was to compensate for the harm caused to Karol Tendera for using on one of its subpages a term suggesting that Auschwitz was the work of Poles and not Germans. […]

A Protest by CMWP SDP Against the Sentence in the Case of the Former Prisoner of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp and ZDF Television

With indignation and sadness, the Press Freedom Monitoring Center SDP acknowledges the judgment of the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH), which means that the German public television channel Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), a tycoon on the media market in Europe, does not have to apologize to Karol Tendera, a former Auschwitz concentration camp prisoner, for using the term “Polish death camps” and that he, as an applicant, must pay 4 thousand euros extra for court fees. […]