Warsaw (dpa) - According to a study, a growing number of Poles have a connection with Germany, especially war. Almost a third of the Polish respondents (30 percent) had this association, is the result of the German-Polish Barometer 2020.
Two years ago, the proportion of Poles who primarily think of this section of German-Polish history was 25 percent, in 2016 it was 21 percent. The joint study on the perception of the other country, in which the Warsaw Institute for Public Affairs and the German Poland Institute were involved, was presented on Wednesday.
When asked "What do you associate with" Germany "and the" Germans "?" The Poles interviewed most frequently used keywords such as "war", "criminals", "occupiers", "concentration camps" and "Hitler". The keyword "compensation", however, came only once.
At the same time, 72 percent of Poles surveyed and 55 percent of Germans rated German-Polish relations as good. For many Germans, the neighboring country mainly means "beautiful landscapes" and "Baltic Sea". Almost a third (29 percent) of all Germans' associations with Poland related to tourism. Only 7 percent of the respondents in Germany named keywords such as "war", "ghetto" or "Auschwitz".
Before the 80th anniversary of the start of the Second World War last year, the conservative PiS government in Warsaw had increased the pressure in the debate about compensation from Germany. A parliamentary commission set up in 2017 has not yet published a report on war damage.
"The rhetoric of the Polish government, which focuses on what happened in World War II, has an impact on the discussion in Poland," said Agnieszka Lada, co-author of the study and deputy director of the Poland Institute. Add to this the influence of the anniversaries celebrated in 2019.
German-Polish barometer