Letter to President Barack Obama

To President Barack Obama
The White House

Dear Mr President:

Thank you for decorating a personal friend of mine, Jan
Kozielewski-Karski with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I am 90
years old Polish-Catholic veteran of five-years imprisonment in the
German Concentration Camp in Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen near Berlin.
After the war I met professor Jan Karski in Caracas Venezuela and
later I was several times his guest in Washington. I wrote about Dr.
Karski in my book "Jews in Poland" (Hippocrene Books. Inc. New York
1993).

I am writing this letter in Florida where, a large and growing Polish
community is slowly catching up with Pennsylvania, Illinois and
Wisconsin. Polish Americans believe that the medal is well deserved by
Dr. Karski.

Your unfortunate description of German-Nazi death camp in Poland as a
"Polish death camp" is offending to Polish Americans aware that Poles
did not collaborate with the Nazis in running the country, much less
in the Holocaust. The use of the phrase "Polish Death Camp" is
insulting and shameful.

Dear President Obama, I have also noticed that you are the first
post-war president of the United States, who during the observation of
the D-Day in France, failed to mention the very important contribution
of the Polish Armored Division at Falaise, France, during the battle
for Normandy in 1944.

Polish Americans are also surprised by the fact that your Secretary of
State Mrs. Hillary Clinton, officially and repeatedly insists that
Polish victims of war pay Jewish victims of war for damages inflicted
on the Jews by the Nazi-Germans and the Soviets.

I want to bring to your attention that recently the names of
Polish-American generals, heroes of the War for American Independence,
Casimir Pulaski and Thaddeus Kościuszko were recently removed from
Amercan history high school text books. I hope you will consider to
intervene and correct this situation.

Respectfully yours,

Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski
Anti-Defamation Committee of
Polish-Amercan Association of Sarasota Florida
988 Bv. of the Arts,
Sarasota, FL 34236