RT — Poland’s ruling officials are stepping up calls to demand compensation from Germany for damages caused in World War II, potentially deepening a divide between the European Union’s largest eastern member and the bloc’s biggest economy.
Deputy Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki lamented that Poland was “massacred” by the country’s neighbour in the war, echoing recent statements by Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz and ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Last month, the latter linked the Nazi invasion to Poland’s moral right to aid from the EU, which is weighing potential sanctions against Poland for flouting the bloc’s standards on democracy and the rule of law.
“The historic bills have not been settled, that’s obvious,” Morawiecki told reporters on Tuesday in Warsaw. “That’s a separate chapter from the present day economic life, and I believe that our partners in Germany understand that.”
Poland’s demands for war reparations from Germany are “a claim for justice,” its prime minister said on Thursday as the Polish parliament reportedly prepares the ground for a possible legal claim.
Speaking after a cabinet meeting on Thursday, Prime Minister Beata Szydlo echoed other top officials who maintained the Poles are still recovering from the damage done by Nazi occupation.
The prime minister said “talking about [World War II] reparations today is a claim for justice and for what belongs to Poland.” She added: “Whoever has a different view … should first look at history and thoroughly learn what was happening on Polish soil during the war.”
The Polish parliament has already passed a resolution in September 2004 declaring that “Poland has not yet received war reparations payments and damages for the enormous extent of destruction and material and non-material costs brought on by German aggression, occupation and genocide,”
East Germany and People’s Republic of Poland – members of the Soviet-led alliance – reconciled the reparations issue in 1953. The Poles unilaterally waived their demand for compensation, while the East Germans ceded much of the territory of former Prussia – the heartland of German militarism – to both Poland and the Soviet Union.
The historic move did not sit well with the current government in Warsaw. Hawkish Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz claimed that Socialist-era Poland was a “Soviet puppet state,” which compromised renunciation of reparation claims at the time. Germans need to “pay back the terrible debt they owe to the Polish people,” he said, according to Deutsche Welle.
Greece, another country that was under Nazi occupation, had also demanded that Germany pay €278.7 billion in giant war reparations and unpaid enforced occupation loans. Berlin dismissed Athens’ claim as well, with government spokesperson Steffen Seibert saying “it is our firm belief that questions of reparations and compensation have been legally and politically resolved,”according to Reuters.
