Poland to demand €1.3 trillion from Germany in WWII reparations

The Polish authorities on Thursday estimated the monetary price of World Struggle II losses below Nazi occupation at €1.3 trillion and stated it might “ask Germany to barter these reparations”.

“It is a vital sum of 6.2 trillion” zlotys, Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, chief of the ruling Legislation and Justice occasion, informed a convention.

He added the method of Poland’s getting the reparations could be “lengthy and tough”.

The sum was introduced on the launch of a report on the price of years of Nazi German occupation. Some 30 historians, economists and different consultants have been engaged on the doc since 2017.

The nation’s right-wing authorities says Poland has not been compensated by Germany whereas Berlin argues compensation was paid to East Bloc nations within the years after the struggle.

Nazi German occupation of Poland started 83 years in the past and lasted till the tip of the struggle in Might 1945.

President Andrzej Duda stated the struggle was “some of the horrible tragedies in our historical past” at a remembrance occasion close to Gdansk.

“Not solely as a result of it took our freedom, not solely as a result of it took our state from us, but additionally as a result of this struggle meant hundreds of thousands of victims amongst Poland’s residents and irreparable losses to our homeland and our nation,” Duda stated.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki tweeted that the struggle losses report was “not solely a settling of the previous, however above all compensation for crippling Poland’s future.”

Dietmar Nietan, the German authorities’s official for German-Polish cooperation, stated in an announcement that 1 September “stays a day of guilt and disgrace for Germany that reminds us again and again to not overlook the crimes carried out by Germany” which can be the “darkest chapter in our historical past” and nonetheless have an effect on bilateral relations.

Reconciliation supplied by individuals in Poland is “the idea on which we are able to look towards the long run collectively in a united Europe,” Nietan stated.

The German authorities stated on Thursday in an announcement to AFP that the matter was closed.

Poland’s authorities rejects a 1953 declaration by the nation’s then-communist leaders, below stress from the Soviet Union, agreeing to not make any additional claims on Germany.

An opposition lawmaker, Grzegorz Schetyna, stated the report is only a “recreation within the inside politics” and insists Poland must construct good relations with Berlin.

Some six million of Poland’s residents, together with three million Jews, have been killed within the struggle and its trade, infrastructure and tradition suffered big losses.