Yes, just as the famous (in Eastern European Jewish culture) "Wise Men of Chelm" -- supposed sages who were gently mocked as fools in children's stories, along with their foolish townsfolk, all disappeared up the chimneys as Chelmo, one of the four genuine Nazi extermination camps dedicated to no other purpose. (Treblinka -- destroyed by inmates in a revolt; Sobibor -- site of a famous mass escape, Maidenek, and Chelmno.) Auschwitz-Birkenau was a slave labor camp also, and in fact mainly.
Our babysitter, I am sure, probably just said Auschwitz because of pronunciation or familiarity. But she certainly was abashed. Sweet kid, Magda.
jks
--- Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
> Chris Doss lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com, Fri Mar 4
> 08:34:04 PST 2005:
> >I don't know Polish, which looks to me like some
> kind of demented
> >Russian in Latin characters typed by a monkey, but
> as far as I know
> >"Auschwitz" is the Germanized spelling of
> "Oswiecim," i.e., it's how
> >"Oswiecim" sounds to a German ear.
>
> "All over the world, Auschwitz has become a symbol
> of terror,
> genocide, and the Holocaust. It was established by
> the Nazis in 1940,
> in the suburbs of the city of Oswiecim which, like
> other parts of
> Poland, was occupied by the Germans during the
> Second World War. The
> name of the city of Oswiecim was changed to
> Auschwitz, which became
> the name of the camp as well" (at
>
<http://www.auschwitz-muzeum.oswiecim.pl/html/eng/start/index.php>).
>
>
<blockquote><http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/14883/edition_id/289/format/html/displaystory.html>
> Friday November 10, 2000
> Auschwitz, place of memory, vs. Oswiecim, a living
> city
> RUTH E. GRUBER
> Jewish Telegraphic Agency
>
> In its 800 years of history, this town in southern
> Poland has been
> called by three names.
>
> Two are well-known: the Polish name, Oswiecim, and
> the infamous
> German name, Auschwitz.
>
> The third name, almost forgotten, appears on no
> current map.
>
> But it was the name known best to most of the town's
> residents in the
> years before World War II: the Yiddish,
> Oshpitsin.</blockquote>
> --
> Yoshie
>
> * Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/>
> * Bring Them Home Now!
> <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/>
> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/>
> * Calendars of Events in Columbus:
> <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>,
> <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, &
> <http://www.cpanews.org/>
> * Student International Forum:
> <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/>
> * Committee for Justice in Palestine:
> <http://www.osudivest.org/>
> * Al-Awda-Ohio:
> <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>
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