Summary: Germany said that it does not owe Poland any more money from the atrocities committed in World War II.
Poland may demand reparations from Germany, according to Bloomberg Politics. The country’s Parliament said that there is a legal basis to pursue claims for damages inflicted by the Nazi regime, and in an opinion piece published on Monday, Parliament said that being able to request reparations have not expired.
In the opinion piece, Parliament said that Poland was short-changed with previous German efforts to pay damages for World War II. The country has not decided whether or not to pursue the wartime reparations, but Monday’s editorial suggests the country may make efforts to collect.
“The body of international law, as well as Germany’s postwar policies in regard to reparations, including the discrimination of Poland and Polish citizens relative other countries that sustained smaller material and human losses but gained much higher damages, support Poland’s claims to gain wartime damages from Germany,” Parliament said.
During World War II, almost 6 million Polish people were killed, almost half of whom were Jewish. Material losses sustained during the war resulted in almost $1 trillion, Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said.
Poland signed a post-war border treaty with Germany in 1990, while other European Nations had settled claims decades after World War II ended. Poland also did not participate in the Marshall Plan, which helped rebuild Western Europe, and that was because Poland was a part of the Soviet bloc at the time of the restoration.
Minister Witold Waszczykowski said last week that Poland’s decision to seek German reparations would take into account “the current political context,” which includes the country’s alliances in Europe.
“Before the government takes an official stand on the reparations, further expertise will be needed, as well as a complex analysis of losses during the second world war,” Waszczykowski said on TVP.
On Friday, a spokesperson for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Germany considers the topic of World War II reparations to be closed and that the country has already paid damages on an “enormous scale.”
“In the German government’s view, there is no reason to doubt the validity under international law of the act of declining reparations 1953,” Merkel’s spokesperson said. “Therefore this question is in our view resolved both legally and politically.”
Relations between Poland and Germany are at an all-time low, The Financial Times said. This year, Poland announced plans to overhaul its judicial system, and the move was criticized by Germany and the European Union. Poland has also come under fire with the EU for refusing to take in refugees from the Middle East, and Poland responded that it was being bullied by the Western European countries.
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