The leader of Poland’s nationalist conservative Law and Justice (PiS, in power), Jaroslaw Kaczynski, said on Thursday that Poland will ask Germany for 1.3 billion euros in compensation for the Nazi occupation in World War II.
Kaczynski announced the claim with the release of a much-anticipated report on the cost to the country of the years of Nazi German occupation, as we look back at 83 years since the start of World War II.
“Not only have we prepared the report, but we have also decided on the next steps. We will ask Germany to open negotiations on compensation,” Kaczynski said during the report’s presentation, admitting it was “a long and difficult road”, but believe in your success.
The Polish government claims that the country was the first casualty of the war and was never fully compensated by neighboring Germany, which is now one of its main partners in the European Union.
Berlin dismisses the case, arguing that compensation was paid to Eastern Bloc countries in the post-war years, while the areas that Poland lost in the east when the borders were redrawn were compensated with some of the areas that belonged to Germany before the war. .
Top Polish party leaders, including Kaczynski, as well as Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, attended the report’s ceremonial launch at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, rebuilt from war ruins.
The report’s publication was the focus of national celebrations of the anniversary of the war that began on September 1, 1939, with the bombing and invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, followed by five years of occupation, which resulted in the deaths of six million people, including three million Jews.
Since 2017, a team of about 30 economists, historians and other experts has been working on the report.
The war was “one of the most terrible tragedies in our history,” Polish President Andrzej Duda said during ceremonies outside Gdansk, one of the first places attacked during the Nazi invasion.
In Germany, the government official responsible for German-Polish cooperation, Dietmar Nietan, said in a statement that the start of World War II “remains a day of guilt and shame for Germany”. in the history of the country.
The Polish government rejects a 1953 statement made by the country’s then communist leaders, under pressure from the Soviet Union, and agreed to make no further claims against Germany.
However, the government’s position is not consensus in Poland and an opposition MP, Grzegorz Schetyna, said the report is just a “game in domestic politics”, arguing that his country needs to build good relations with Berlin.
Source: DN
