IIn Poland, the opposition has backed the government’s plan to demand reparations from Germany for war damage sustained in World War II. The deputy chairman of the largest opposition party, the Civic Platform (PO), Tomasz Siemoniak, said on television on Thursday that “of course” a future PO government would also pursue this concern in the interest of continuity. “In order to get anything from Germany, you need dialogue and proper relations with it.” At the same time, Warsaw announced that it would prepare a diplomatic note by the beginning of October to officially inform Berlin about the demand for reparations.
On Wednesday afternoon, Poland’s House of Representatives, the Sejm, called on the federal government to “take political, historical, legal and financial responsibility for all the consequences caused to Poland and its citizens by the Third Reich’s unleashing of World War II.” For the resolution was approved by an overwhelming majority of 418 of the 437 MPs present. At the request of an opposition member of parliament, the word “reparations” was deleted from the resolution and replaced with “reparations”.
Tusk initially reacted ambivalently
The text refers “as a starting point” to the report presented two weeks ago by a parliamentary commission, in which the war damage is estimated at the equivalent of more than 1.3 trillion euros. He expresses the hope for corresponding talks, which should lead to an “appropriate reaction” from the federal government. Contrary to the opinion of the Federal Government, Poland has never legally waived its demands. A declaration of waiver by the communist People’s Republic of Poland was declared invalid.
When the government presented the report on September 1, the PO chairman Donald Tusk reacted ambivalently: He keeps his fingers crossed for the government, but doesn’t believe that it will be successful. Other opposition politicians have now explained why they voted in favor of the resolution in the Sejm. “The Poles are entitled to compensation,” said Liberal Barbara Nowacka. Adrian Zandberg from the left and Wladyslaw Teofil Bartoszewski from the peasant party PSL, whose father was an Auschwitz prisoner and foreign minister, also rated the reparations report as a good “starting point” for talks with Germany. For this it is good to win allies, in Germany for example the Greens.
At the same time, the resolution contains the request to measure the damage caused by the Soviet Union because it occupied eastern Poland after the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939, deported “thousands” of people to Siberia and murdered prisoners of war. A calculation of the damage will be the basis for an initiative towards Russia, it said.