2019-11-11 10:47 update: 2019-11-13, 19:45
Photo PAP/Andrzej Grygiel
In a letter to the company’s CEO Reed Hastings, the PM scolded the network’s recent documentary series The Devil Next Door for “obfuscating historical facts” including a map which “falsely places several German Nazi concentration camps within modern-day Poland’s borders.”
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has hit out at Netflix over its inaccurate portrayal of German-occupied Poland during World War Two.
In a letter to the company’s CEO Reed Hastings, the PM scolded the network’s recent documentary series The Devil Next Door for “obfuscating historical facts” including a map which “falsely places several German Nazi concentration camps within modern-day Poland’s borders.”
The PM said that the documentary about John Demjanjuk, a sadistic guard at the Treblinka German Nazi death camp, also failed to make it clear that the camps were set up and operated by Germans.
In his letter, the PM wrote: “Not only is this map incorrect but it deceives viewers into believing that Poland was responsible for establishing and maintaining these camps, and for committing the crimes therein.”
He added: “As my country did not even exist at that time as an independent state, and millions of Poles were murdered at these sites, this element of The Devil Next Door is nothing short of rewriting history.
“I believe that this terrible mistake has been committed unintentionally - and I am hoping that you will be able to correct it as soon as possible.”
The Nazi German Treblinka concentration camp, located in today's east-central Poland, began operating on June 1, 1942, as part of its "Operation Reinhardt" plan to exterminate European Jews.
It is estimated that nearly 900,000 Europeans of Jewish descent were murdered there.
The vast majority, about 760,000, were Polish citizens.
Treblinka was one of the main extermination sites for European Jews, the death count coming second only to the main Holocaust site Auschwitz. (PAP)
