WARSAW, Poland (Washington Insider Magazine)— On Monday, Poland’s foreign minister formally demanded Germany pay $1.3 trillion in reparations for the destruction done by Nazi German invaders during World War II.
The memo will be delivered to the German Foreign Ministry, according to Zbigniew Rau. The letter was signed just before Rau and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who will be attending a security conference, will meet in Warsaw.
The memo, according to Rau, expresses his opinion that the 2 sides should act “without delay” to address the long and complicated, legally binding as well as physical impacts of Germany’s 1939–45 occupation.
That would address the matter of looted artworks, bank deposits, and archives, he claimed, as well as German reparations. According to him, Berlin has to do more to educate German society about the true nature of the war and its horrific consequences for Poland.
Warsaw said, making reparations would improve bilateral ties via justice and the pursuit of the truth while also putting a terrible chapter in the past to rest. According to Germany, the dispute was resolved decades ago.
The 2 European neighbors and allies have a “responsibility to safeguard the trust we have built together over the past 30 years,” Baerbock said in Berlin before leaving for Poland.
Baerbock emphasized that part of this process was accepting and remembering the immense suffering that Germany caused the Polish people.
According to ABC NEWS, Poland’s right-wing administration claims that the nation hasn’t received full restitution from its neighbor, Germany, who is now one of its main allies inside the European Union.
Poland’s government released a thorough assessment of the war’s damages on September 1, the 83rd anniversary of the war, and put the cost at $1.3 trillion.
Poland’s administration rejects a declaration signed in 1953 by the nation’s communist authorities in response to pressure from the Soviet Union to abandon any claims to Germany.
Germany claims that after the war, restitution was paid to the countries of the Eastern Bloc, and part of Germany’s prewar holdings were used to make up for the territory Poland lost in the east when its borders were altered. Berlin declares the case resolved. Moscow made the decision that Poland would only get a tiny portion of the reparations.
Germany provided one-time compensation in the 1990s to those who had been victims of forced labor and former prisoners of Nazi concentration camps, including many Poles.
Despite positive ties between the two countries, Poland’s most influential leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has recently been more antagonistic toward Germany, emphasizing its guilt from World War II and asserting that it is in control of the European Union.
That is seen by critics as a strategy to mobilize support before the general elections that will take place in the fall of next year. The narrow majority that now enables the incumbent Law and Justice party and its partners to enact laws without engaging in negotiations with other parties is predicted to be lost, according to opinion surveys.
Tomasz Grodzki, the Senate Speaker and a member of the opposition, claimed that the ruling party’s campaign mantra for the upcoming election will be that voting against it would be against Poland’s interests.
3 million Jews and almost 6 million other Poles died in the war. Some of them were the victims of the Soviet Red Army’s eastward invasion.