White House Says President Misspoke on 'Polish Death Camp' The White House said on Wednesday that President Obama misspoke when he referred to a "Polish death camp" during a Medal of Freedom ceremony, an explanation that appears not to satisfy outraged Polish officials. Mr. Obama made the comment while posthumously awarding the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, to Jan Karski, born Jan Kozielewski, a Polish courier who was one of the first to alert President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Allied leaders to the killing of Jews in German-occupied Poland. "Before one trip across enemy lines," Mr. Obama said, "resistance fighters told him that Jews were being murdered on a massive scale, and smuggled him into the Warsaw Ghetto and a Polish death camp to see for himself." That phrase - "Polish death camp" - quickly reverberated in Poland, where citizens are quick to note that the death camps were run by Nazis who had occupied the country at the time. In a statement released by the White House on Wednesday morning, Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said the president had misspoken. "He was referring to Nazi death camps in German-occupied Poland," Mr. Vietor said in the statement. We regret this misstatement, which should not detract from the clear intention to honor Mr. Karski and those brave Polish citizens who stood on the side of human dignity in the face of tyranny. Polish officials demanded a White House apology for the remark, and Donald Tusk, the country's prime minister, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he accepted the explanation but wanted a "stronger, more pointed" response. Mr. Tusk told the news agency that a fuller explanation was "a matter of the U.S."s reputation" and a way to stop the use of the phrase "once and for all." White House officials noted that Mr. Obama has visited the sites of former Nazi camps in the past and has spoken in the past about the bravery of the Polish people during World War II. "On several occasions - including his visit last year to the Warsaw Ghetto memorial, his remarks at the Holocaust Museum last month, and his video message at the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz - President Obama has paid tribute to the terrible loss of innocent Poles in Nazi death camps during the Holocaust," Mr. Vietor said. It was not the president's first misstatement when it comes to the Nazi camps. At a Memorial Day event during the 2008 campaign Mr. Obama said that his uncle had helped liberate Jews at the Auschwitz death camp. In fact, Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet Union. A statement issued by his campaign at the time said that Mr. Obama "mistakenly referred to Auschwitz instead of Buchenwald in telling of his personal experience of a soldier in his family who served heroically." Mr. Obama's great-uncle, Charlie Payne - his grandmother's brother - actually helped liberate Ohrdruf, a sub-camp of Buchenwald. Mr. Payne was a member of the 89th Infantry Division.