WARSAW, Poland (AP) – Poland’s foreign minister on Monday signed an official note to Germany demanding the payment of about $1.3 trillion in reparations for the damage caused by the occupation of Nazi Germans during the war World War II arose.
Zbigniew Rau said the note would be handed over to the German foreign ministry. The signing comes on the eve of Rau’s meeting in Warsaw with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who will be attending a security conference.
Rau said the note expresses his view that both sides should take “immediate” action to address the impact of the 1939-45 German occupation in “an enduring and complex, legally binding and material manner.”
He said this would include German reparations as well as solving the problem of looted artworks, archives and bank deposits. He said Berlin should strive to educate German society about the “true” picture of the war and its devastating impact on Poland.
Warsaw says paying reparations would strengthen bilateral ties through truth and justice and close painful chapters from the past. Germany says the matter was closed decades ago.
Before leaving for Poland, Baerbock said in Berlin that the two European neighbors and partners “have a responsibility to maintain the trust that we have built together over the past 30 years”.
“This also includes coming to terms with and remembering the immeasurable suffering that Germany brought to the people of Poland,” emphasized Baerbock.
“There can and will not be a line drawn here,” said Baerbock.
Poland’s right-wing government argues that the country has not been fully compensated by neighboring Germany, which is now one of its key partners within the European Union.
On September 1, the 83rd anniversary of the war, the Polish government issued a detailed report on the damage, estimating it at $1.3 trillion.
Poland’s government, under pressure from the Soviet Union, rejected a 1953 declaration by the country’s then-communist leaders that Poland would make no further claims on Germany.
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Germany argues that the Eastern Bloc countries were paid indemnities in the years after the war, while the territories Poland lost to the east when the borders were redrawn were compensated with some German pre-war territories. Berlin calls the matter closed. It was Moscow that decided Poland would receive only a small fraction of the compensation.
In the 1990s, Germany paid one-off compensation payments to former inmates of Nazi concentration camps and victims of forced labor, many of them Poles.
Despite good bilateral relations, Poland’s most powerful politician, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has recently spoken increasingly hostile about Germany, recalled its war guilt and asserted dominance in the European Union.
Critics see it as a tactic aimed at rallying support ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for next fall. Opinion polls suggest that the ruling Law and Justice party and its allies will lose the slim majority that now allows them to pass laws without negotiating with other parties.
Senate spokesman Tomasz Grodzki, a member of the opposition, said anti-German rhetoric was becoming the ruling party’s mantra for the upcoming elections – that voting against the ruling party was voting against Poland’s interests.
“This is blatant nonsense; it is untrue. It’s a desperate attempt to defend against polls showing falling support,” Grodzki said.
Around 6 million Polish citizens, including 3 million Jews, were killed in the war. Some of them fell victim to the Soviet Red Army invading from the east.
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Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed to this report.