Mr Barack Obama,

President  of United States of America

Mr Joachim Gauck

President  of Republic of Germany

Excellencies,

Respectful Presidents,

I have just heard in the news service that you, Mr President of the United States during the ceremony of handing over a U.S. medal, meant for a departed Polish hero Mr. Jan Karski, used an expression „polish death camp” in relation to a II world war German State extermination camp.

I am deeply shocked and disgusted with this information and therefore direct this open letter to both of you Sirs.

Mr President of the United States, I was born in 1922 in Warsaw. You cannot even imagine how beautiful was that town in those days. I spent my childhood there, and teenage years. I fell in love in Warsaw and there I was married in the Warsaw cathedral. In 1939 Warsaw I experienced German invasion of Poland and there I spent    5 years of German occupation of my country. My older brother was killed in Warsaw Uprising in 1944. My younger brother was netted, during the routine German army street kidnapping, and transported to Auschwitz like thousands of Warsaw citizens for extermination. After the collapse of the uprising in October 1944 together with thousands of Warsawians I was driven away from my town, completely burned and demolished, and put into labour camp to work in extremely difficult conditions in the German arms factory.

I would like to tell you Mr President of the United States, that concentration camps ( or as some call them labour camps ) were German State institutions, entirely maintained from the German State budget ( Deutsches Reich ). The death camps were used by the German State to realise its aims, and that is: to exterminate various groups of people due to their race, nationality, religion, political convictions or the state of health. That is what Mr Jan Karski reported to various state officials, but the world did not want to know.

I crave also to turn to you, Mr President of German Republic.

Please tell the world about those times. Speak up of what German State did and what German People were doing during the war. Is it right to be so discreetly silent, when the Poles are discredited, and silently allow to transfer responsibility for German crimes on their victims? Such is after all history of German nation. Such it is and nothing will change it.

We forgive and ask for forgiveness, but only in truth.

Krystyna z Godlewskich

Poland, Piotrków Trybunalski, May 30th, 2012