Many news organizations around the world have introduced procedures to prevent the use of misleading language suggesting that German concentration and extermination camps during World War II were Polish, according to Katarzyna Szaran, head of the foreign ministry department responsible for countering foreign disinformation.
Any references suggesting that Nazi German camps were "Polish" are inaccurate and considered deeply offensive in Poland because the camps were built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during the war.
Polish officials have long argued that imprecise wording can distort historical responsibility and feed wider disinformation.
Szaran told Poland's PAP news agency that any use of such misnomers prompts an immediate response from Polish diplomats.
"Our missions abroad remain vigilant in this area," she said earlier this month. "Whenever such phrases appeared, there were immediate reactions from embassy press spokespeople or from ambassadors themselves."
She said years of such efforts had led editors to put safeguards in place.
"Over the years, we have led newsrooms to implement appropriate procedures," she said.
Szaran said the issue showed why precise language matters in public life, especially when hostile actors exploit ambiguity, emotion and historical distortion.
Disinformation as a security threat
The Polish foreign ministry created its Department for Strategic Communications and Countering Foreign Disinformation in August 2024, as Poland and other countries increasingly viewed disinformation as a growing security threat.
Szaran said international disinformation had been a serious concern since at least Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
She said Russian security services use troll farms, software bots and automated networks to create and circulate comments attacking Ukraine, NATO and the European Union. Such operations are designed to polarize societies and provoke outrage.
"Our adversaries try to inject polarizing, emotional content that sometimes drives us to fury in front of a computer or phone,” Szaran said. “And it turns out that this is exactly the aim, to trigger those emotions, to stir us up."
'It is enough to tell the truth'
She said democracies had to respond with legal and truthful methods.
“We differ from Russia in that, fortunately, we are a democratic country, and we certainly use tools and methods that are legal,” she said. “What Russia uses are all kinds of illegal activities, connected with paying various networks of trolls and bots.”
Szaran said disinformation activity often intensifies before elections, citing recent examples in France, Moldova and Romania.
She added that Poland’s diplomatic missions continually monitor how Poland and issues important to the country are portrayed in foreign media outlets and on social media.
“There is no need to resort to the measures Russia takes,” she said. “It is enough to tell the truth, and it will defend itself. Of course, that requires enormous effort.”
(rt/gs)
Source: PAP