Free Republic

JUNE 1, 2012 President Obama Shuns Lech Walesa The Polish Solidarity leader is “too political” for the administration. By Rory Cooper Lech Walesa was once a trade-union activist. He was often arrested for speaking his mind against Communist oppression behind the Iron Curtain in Poland and for defying the Soviet Union. He was an electrician who, with no higher education, led one of the most profound freedom movements of the 20th century — Solidarity. He became president of Poland and swept in reforms, pushing the Soviet Union out of his homeland and moving the country toward a free-market economy and...

The president referred to “Polish death camps” while awarding a posthumous Medal of Freedom to Polish professor Jan Karski, a hero of the anti-Nazi resistance. Poles believe they're blamed unfairly for the Nazi Holocaust, and the Foreign Minister led the outrage in a late night tweet. The remark, which barely drew notice in America, is all over the Polish news today. On the country's largest television station:

Poles and Polish-Americans expressed outraged Tuesday at President Obama’s reference earlier that day to “a Polish death camp” — as opposed to a Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland. “The White House will apologize for this outrageous error,” Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski tweeted. Sikorski said that Polish Prime Minister Donald “Tusk will make a statement in the morning. It’s a pity that this important ceremony was upstaged by ignorance and incompetence.” The president had been trying to honor a famous Pole, awarding a Presidential Medal of Freedom to Jan Karski, a resistance fighter who sneaked behind enemy lines to bear...