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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
The Auschwitz Museum has criticised the German government for issuing a statement that commemorated various groups of victims of Nazism but failed to mention Poles, millions of whom were killed and who were the first prisoners at Auschwitz.
“It is deeply troubling that the statement commemorating the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz failed to mention the Polish victims of the camp,” wrote the museum, which is a Polish state institution, on social media in a message directed to German government spokesman Stefan Kornelius.
.@RegSprecher Es ist zutiefst beunruhigend, dass die Erklärung zum Jahrestag der Befreiung von Auschwitz die polnischen Opfer des Lagers unerwähnt ließ.
Schließlich war es diese Gruppe, für die der deutsche Staat das Konzentrationslager Auschwitz im besetzten Polen errichtet… pic.twitter.com/dqMSTQYb2D
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) January 28, 2026
The post linked to a statement issued on Wednesday by the German government, one day after International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is held on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on 27 January 1945.
In its statement, Germany said that Auschwitz, where over 1.1 million people, the vast majority of them Jews, were killed, “symbolises the immeasurable crimes of the Nazi regime like no other place“.
It also noted that, between 1933 and 1945, “the Nazis systematically murdered over six million Jews” while “millions more people were disenfranchised, persecuted and killed”.
“These included, among others, Sinti and Roma, Jehovah’s Witnesses, members of sexual minorities, political opponents, and people with disabilities,” continued the statement. “Remembrance means taking responsibility for the past and passing it on to future generations.”
The Auschwitz Museum criticised the exclusion of Polish victims from that list. It noted that Auschwitz itself was originally created by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland to house ethnic Polish prisoners. Only later did it become an extermination camp for Jews.
“A responsible approach to historical accuracy should take this into account,” wrote the museum, which recommended that the German government study its online course about the history of the camp.
In total, around 140,000-150,000 Poles were deported to Auschwitz and an estimated 70,000-75,000 of those were killed there. In both cases, those figures are second only to Jews in terms of the number of victims of the camp.
More broadly, during the Nazi-German occupation of Poland from 1939 to 1945, around 6 million Polish citizens were killed, representing 17% of the prewar population – a higher relative death toll than any other country during the war. Around half of those victims were Polish Jews.
Polish President @NawrockiKn has renewed his call for Germany to pay Poland war reparations during a speech at Auschwitz on the anniversary of the camp’s liberation, which is also marked as International Holocaust Remembrance Day https://t.co/7cqQNFOKCr
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) January 27, 2026
Many in Poland argue that the suffering of ethnic Poles during the war has been forgotten by many in the West, including in Germany.
On Tuesday this week, during a speech at Auschwitz on the anniversary of its liberation, Polish President Karol Nawrocki referred to the systematic murder of ethnic Poles by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as a “forgotten Holocaust”.
In 2024, the German government itself admitted that “the horrors of Nazi Germany’s occupation of Poland…are still not well known in this country [Germany]”.
In an effort to “close this gap in our culture of remembrance”, the German government has been working on erecting a permanent memorial in Berlin dedicated to Polish victims of Nazi Germany.
Germany’s parliament has passed a motion calling on the government to establish a permanent memorial in Berlin to Polish victims of the German-Nazi occupation.
The measure was supported by all parties apart from the far-right AfD https://t.co/8dk0ZSpmjJ
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) December 3, 2025
Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
Image credits: Bartosz Siedlik/European Union 2017
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
