Poland to demand €1.3 trillion from Germany in WWII reparations

The Polish authorities on Thursday estimated the monetary price of World Battle II losses beneath Nazi occupation at €1.3 trillion and mentioned it will “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 Regulation and Justice celebration, advised a convention.

He added the method of Poland’s getting the reparations can 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 battle.

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

President Andrzej Duda mentioned the battle was “one of the vital 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 in addition as a result of this battle meant hundreds of thousands of victims amongst Poland’s residents and irreparable losses to our homeland and our nation,” Duda mentioned.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki tweeted that the battle 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, mentioned in an announcement that 1 September “stays a day of guilt and disgrace for Germany that reminds us repeatedly to not neglect the crimes carried out by Germany” which might be the “darkest chapter in our historical past” and nonetheless have an effect on bilateral relations.

Reconciliation provided by folks in Poland is “the premise on which we are able to look towards the long run collectively in a united Europe,” Nietan mentioned.

The German authorities mentioned 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, beneath stress from the Soviet Union, agreeing to not make any additional claims on Germany.

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

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