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Jarosław Kaczyński: A »Long and Difficult Road« to Reparations
Photo: Czarek Sokolowski/AP
In a report, Poland put the damage caused 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, Jarosław Kaczyński, spoke in Warsaw on Thursday of "enormous damage" to date.
The report was presented at the Royal Castle in the Polish capital on the 83rd anniversary of the start of the Second World War.
It is intended to underpin the demands for reparations made by Poland's national-conservative government to Germany.
The federal government no longer sees a basis for this.
Report has already been announced more
“The Germans invaded Poland and did us enormous damage.
The occupation was incredibly criminal, incredibly cruel and had repercussions that in many cases continue to this day,” said Kaczyński, who is considered a strongman in Polish politics.
Warsaw will therefore demand reparations from Berlin.
"We cannot go back to business as usual just because it seems to someone that Poland is in a special, radically lower position than other countries." He was aware that the path to reparations was "a long and difficult one".
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 set up a parliamentary commission for the report.
Poland also founded a research institute for war damage.
The report that had been announced several times was now 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 dead - other estimates even go up to 80 million.
There are no exact figures.
It is estimated that up to six million people lost their lives in Poland alone.
According to Arkadiusz Mularczyk, head of the parliamentary commission, 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 the areas of demography, economic assessment of human losses and material losses.
It is also about the loss of cultural and artistic assets as well as various types of funds, bank accounts and securities.
The federal government rejects any claims for reparations.
For them, the question is closed with the 2+4 treaty on the foreign policy aspects of German unity.
muk/AFP