83 years after the start of the Second World War, Poland presents a report on the damage sustained during the war. PiS boss Jaroslaw Kaczynski announces demands for reparations from Germany.
Poland, which was invaded by Nazi Germany, estimates its damage from World War II at more than 1.3 trillion euros – and now wants reparations from Germany. The chairman of the national-conservative governing party PiS, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, spoke in Warsaw of the “enormous damage” to date.
The amount of damage was calculated by a parliamentary commission. The report was presented in the Royal Castle of Warsaw – exactly 83 years after the German invasion of the neighboring country and the beginning of the Second World War.
The report is intended to underpin Poland’s demands for reparations from the Federal Republic. However, the federal government sees no basis for this. “The position of the federal government is unchanged. The reparations issue is closed,” said a spokesman for the Foreign Office. Poland had already waived further reparations in 1953 and confirmed this several times. “This is an essential basis for the current order in Europe.” But Germany “stands by its responsibility for the Second World War politically and morally”.
Kaczynski: “Long and difficult road”
Kaczynski, who is considered a strongman in Polish politics, emphasized: “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.” Warsaw will therefore demand reparations from Berlin. He is aware that it is a “long and difficult road” to actual payments.
The national-conservative PiS government, which has led the neighboring country since 2015, has repeatedly raised the issue of reparations. In 2017, the PiS set up a parliamentary commission for the report. Poland also founded a research institute for war damage. The report that has been announced several times has now been presented on a symbolic day: On September 1, 1939, the German invasion of Poland began, and with it the Second World War.
The study involved 30 experts, including historians, economists and lawyers. The report puts the damage caused by World War II at 6.22 trillion zloty. According to the current rate, that is almost 1.32 trillion euros. The Polish news agency PAP even put the value at 1.53 trillion dollars.
PiS boss: Amount that the German economy can handle
Kaczynski said it was a very large sum. However, if one considers that this type of reparations would be paid over decades, this is “an amount that the German economy can afford and that does not place an excessive burden on it.”
According to the Commission’s calculations, more than 5.2 million people lost their lives in Poland as a result of the war and the German occupation. A fifth of them were children under the age of ten. In 1938 Poland had almost 35 million inhabitants.
The commission estimated the losses from the lost income of those killed alone at 919 billion euros. “This is a purely economic assessment of human life, purely through the prism of gross domestic product – it does not take into account suffering and broken families or psychological trauma,” said former parliamentary commission chairman Arkadiusz Mulaczyk. More than 2.1 million men and women were also abducted as forced laborers.
The report puts the material damage to Poland from the attack and occupation at the equivalent of around 170 billion euros. In addition, there would be destroyed cultural assets and art worth around 4 billion euros. According to Mulaczyk, the commission recommended a bilateral agreement between Berlin and Warsaw to settle the question of reparations.
“Death is a master from Germany,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki quoted in German from the poem “Todesfuge” by Paul Celan. German society bears collective responsibility for the Second World War.
Source: Stern
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