UNESCO adds Nazi to Poland Auschwitz camp

WARSAW, Poland, July 13 (UPI) -- The UNESCO committee for world heritage sites Thursday agreed to add a Nazi reference to the Auschwitz death camp in southern Poland.

The new name of the camp, if finally approved at a UNESCO session next year, will be "The former Nazi German concentration and liquidation camp Auschwitz-Birkenau," Belgrade's Beta news agency reported.

In March, the Polish government sent a letter to UNESCO asking that the official name of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp be changed to bear direct reference to Nazi Germany. Auschwitz was the German name for the nearby Polish town of Oswiecim, near Krakow.

Over 1 million people, almost all of them Jews, died in the Auschwitz death camp from 1940-45.