Poland will seek the equivalent of some $1.3 trillion in reparations from Germany for the Nazis’ World War II invasion and occupation of the country.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the Law and Justice party, announced the huge claim at the release of a long-awaited report on the cost to the country of years of Nazi German occupation as it marks 83 years since the start of World War II.
He insisted the move would serve “true Polish-German reconciliation” that would be based on “truth.”
Germany argues compensation was paid to Eastern Bloc nations in the years after the war while territories that Poland lost in the East as borders were redrawn were compensated with some of Germany’s pre-war lands. Berlin calls the matter closed.
Germany’s Foreign Ministry said the government’s position remains “unchanged” in that “the question of reparations is concluded.”
Poland’s right-wing government argues that the country which was the war’s first victim has not been fully compensated by neighboring Germany, which is now one of its major partners within the European Union.
“Germany has never really accounted for its crimes against Poland,“ Kaczynski said, claiming that many Germans who committed war crimes lived in impunity in Germany after the war.
Poland’s government rejects a 1953 declaration by the country’s then-communist leaders, under pressure from the Soviet Union, agreeing not to make any further claims on Germany.
Some 6 million of Poland’s citizens, including 3 million Jews, were killed in the war. Some of them were victims of the Soviet Red Army, which invaded from the east.
