In a report, Poland estimates the damage done by Nazi Germany in World War II at the equivalent of more than 1.3 trillion euros. The chairman of the national conservative ruling party PiS, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, spoke in Warsaw on Thursday about “enormous damage” so far. The report was presented at the Royal Castle in the Polish capital on the 83rd anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.
It is intended to substantiate the reparations demands of the National Conservative Government of Poland to the Federal Republic of Poland. “The Germans invaded Poland and caused us enormous damage. The occupation was incredibly criminal, incredibly cruel and had consequences that in many cases last to this day,” said Kaczynski, who is considered a strongman in Polish politics. Warsaw will therefore demand reparations from Berlin. “We can not going back to normalcy just because it seems to someone that Poland is in a special, radically lower position than other countries.” He was aware that there was a “long and difficult road” to reparations.
Report presented 83 years after the start of the war
The national conservative PiS government, which has led the neighboring country since 2015, has repeatedly raised the issue of compensation payments. In 2017, the PiS established a parliamentary committee for the report. Poland also established a war damage research institute. The report, announced several times, has now been presented on a symbolic day: on September 1, 1939, the German invasion of Poland began.
This was also the beginning of the Second World War with at least 55 million deaths – other estimates go as far as 80 million. There are no exact figures. An estimated six million people lost their lives in Poland alone. According to Arkadiusz Mularczyk, head of the parliamentary committee, 30 experts, including historians, economists and real estate appraisers, were involved in the report.
The first volume is more than 500 pages and is divided into nine chapters – calculations of Polish war losses in terms of demographics, economic assessment of human losses and material losses. It also involves the loss of cultural and artistic assets, as well as various types of funds, bank accounts and securities.
Germany rejects demands
The German federal government rejects any claim because it no longer sees a basis for it. For them, the issue is closed with the 2+4 treaty on the foreign-political aspects of German unity. On his first visit to Warsaw in December, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz responded to reparations demands by referring to the EU’s high German financial payments. A large part of this goes to EU countries in the south and east of the Union.
The head of Poland’s largest opposition party, Civic Platform, Donald Tusk, accused Kaczynski of not really wanting compensation for the destruction of World War II. “It is a domestic political campaign to strengthen support for his party,” said the former EU Council president. While PiS leads the Civic Platform in polls, its lead has dwindled in the face of rising inflation and an economic downturn.
Source: Krone
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