Warsaw urges Mattel to recall game over 'Nazi Poland' term

Poland on Friday said it has demanded that US toy producer Mattel recall the party game "Apples to Apples" for using the erroneous term "Nazi Poland," as Warsaw had never collaborated with Hitler.

Poland was attacked and occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II and was among the hardest hit by the conflict, losing six million of its citizens between 1939 and 1945, including three million Jews in the Holocaust.

"We demanded the game be withdrawn and corrected," Polish Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna told reporters.

"We're also organising a Twitter protest by Poles from around the world, including in the United States, to have the game pulled from the market."

The game requires players to match cards bearing nouns -- "my bank account," for example -- with ones bearing adjectives, such as "frightening".  

The noun card that spurred Poland's protest is "Schindler's List," featuring a description of the 1993 Steven Spielberg film that says the story took place in "Nazi Poland".

Schetyna said a lawsuit was possible: "In the absence of a positive response from the company, we will look into our legal options."

He said the use of the erroneous term showed "a lack of basic knowledge of history," adding that "that is unfortunately often the case in the US, as we've seen over the last few days".

The foreign ministry summoned the US ambassador to Warsaw at the weekend over comments by FBI director James Comey that Poland shared responsibility for the Holocaust with Germany.

He later expressed "regret" over the comments.

"The Polish State bears no responsibility for the horrors imposed by the Nazis," he said Wednesday in a handwritten note to the Polish ambassador in Washington.

Poland's government also watches the global media for descriptions of former Nazi German death camps as "Polish" because it says the term -- even if used simply as a geographical indicator -- can give the impression that Poland bore responsibility for the Holocaust.

US President Barack Obama used the term "Polish death camp" in 2012 and later expressed "regret".