Polish Foreign Ministry, party critical of Netflix documentary

Poland's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the junior ruling coalition partner Agreement, on Sunday expressed criticism of a Netflix documentary series which they say presents untrue information about Poland's history during WWII.

The video streaming service Netflix has recently launched its documentary series the Devil Next Door about John Demjanjuk, known as Ivan the Terrible, a sadistic guard at the Treblinka German Nazi death camp.

The ministry and the party said the series presents untrue information about Poland, including wrong borders of the Germany-occupied Poland during WWII and lack of clear reference to the nationality of the Nazis who ran death camps located on today's Polish territory. This, according to the ministry and Agreement, could imply Poland's complicity in the war crimes that are attributable to Nazi Germany.

Deputy Justice Minister Sebastian Kaleta said he would ask Poland's Institute of National Remembrance to take legal steps against Netflix.

Nazi Germany launched the construction of the Treblinka concentration camp, located in today's east-central Poland, on June 1, 1942, as part of its "Operation Reinhardt" plan to exterminate European Jews. It is estimated that nearly 900,000 Europeans of Jewish descent were murdered there. The vast majority, about 760,000, were Polish citizens.

Treblinka was one of the main extermination sites for European Jews, the death count coming second only to the main Holocaust site Auschwitz.