Poles Claim Victory in Battle to Rename Auschwitz

The UN has accepted a request to rename Auschwitz to make it clear that the concentration camp was run by Germans not Poles, the Polish government said today.

"Unesco has made a decision as a result of Poland's request to change the name of Auschwitz-Birkenau to reflect the historical truth," the Polish culture minister, Kazimierz Ujazdowski, told a news conference in Warsaw, with the Israeli ambassador at his side. "This is a victory for truth".

But a spokesman for the Paris-based UN education and culture organisation said he could not confirm the news as he had not received word from Unesco's world heritage committee, which is meeting in New Zealand.

Last year, Poland announced prematurely that Unesco had made the change on its list of world heritage sites. Auschwitz was added to the list in 1979.

Poland wants Unesco to change the official name of the camp, where more than one million Jews from across Europe were killed by the Nazis, to "former Nazi German concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau" to avoid any confusion as to who was in charge.

The Polish government made the request last year after media references to Auschwitz as a Polish concentration camp.

The German newspaper Der Spiegel last year called the camp "Polish", sparking anger in Warsaw.

Polish officials fear that the link between Auschwitz and Nazi Germany is being lost among younger people.

Auschwitz was established by the Nazis in the suburbs of the city of Oswiecim, that, along with other parts of Poland, was occupied by the Germans during the second world war.

The name Oswiecim was changed to Auschwitz, which also became the name of the camp.

Initially used as a labour camp for Polish prisoners, it was gradually expanded into a vast labour and death camp that became the site of the greatest mass murder in history where Jews, Soviet prisoners of war, Gypsies, homosexuals, people with disabilities and prisoners of conscience or religious faith were killed.

The request for a name change comes amid tension between Poland and Germany after an ill-tempered EU summit where the two clashed over a new voting system for the 27-member organisation.

A rightwing Polish magazine this week poured fuel on the fire when its cover carried a montage showing a beaming German chancellor Angela Merkel as "Europe's stepmother" baring her breasts to nourish the Polish prime minister, Jarolaw Kaczynski, and his twin brother, the president, Lech Kaczynski.