A prestigious U.S. award ceremony leads to a trans-atlantic gaffe.
U.S. President Barack Obama awards a posthumous Medal of Freedom to Jan Karski a polish resistance fighter from World War Two.
(SOUNDBITE) (English) U.S. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA,SAYING:
"Before one trip across enemy lines, resistance fighters told him that Jews were being murdered on a massive scale, and smuggled him into the Warsaw Ghetto and a Polish death camp to see for himself. Jan took that information to President Franklin Roosevelt, giving one of the first accounts of the Holocaust and imploring to the world to take action."
Those words are now ringing though Poland, where the government and citizens demand an apology for the reference to a Polish death camp
(SOUNDBITE) (Polish) POLISH PRIME MINISTER DONALD TUSK, SAYING:
"Yesterday's words of the President of the United States, Mr. Barack Obama, about Polish death camps have affected all Poles. We always react the same way when ignorance, lack of knowledge or bad will leads to a misinterpretation of history. In this case it is especially hurtful for us in Poland, in a country which suffered like no other in Europe during World War II."
Poland lost nearly six million people in World War Two.
The White House expressed regret at the statement and said the president misspoke while referring to Nazi death camps in German-occupied Poland.
Deborah Lutterbeck, Reuters.
