Every Polish citizen should receive war reparations from Germany, says official overseeing claim

Every Polish citizen should receive war reparations from Germany, says incoming deputy foreign Arkadiusz Mularczyk, who has been overseeing the ruling party’s claim for up to $1.3 trillion in war damages.

Mularczyk also warns that that figure was an estimate based on the value of losses calculated last December, and that it will continue growing the longer Germany refuses to pay. Berlin insists the reparations issue was settled decades ago and nothing is now owed.

“I believe that the German chancellor will come to his senses,” Mularczyk told the Polish Press Agency (PAP). But if the Germans continue to maintain that no reparations are owed, “they’ll have a problem”, he added.

“Because over the next months and years we will be reminding people everywhere possible, at all international forums, of German war crimes and the fact that Germany has a debt to Poland,” warned Mularczyk.

Mularczyk, an MP from the ruling national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, oversaw the parliamentary committee that produced a report estimating the financial losses caused to Poland by Nazi Germany’s occupation of 1939 to 1945. This week it was announced he is to be appointed deputy foreign minister.

Mularczyk has said that one of his main tasks in the new position will be seeking war reparations from Berlin, Wprost magazine reports. Earlier this month, the foreign minister, Zbigniew Rau, issued a diplomatic note to Berlin outlining Poland’s claim.

Last week, however, Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper reported that the word “reparations” does not actually appear in the document and that it does not mention a specific amount that Berlin should pay to Poland for war losses.

While Mularczyk’s committee calculated the $1.3 trillion figure, by “the end of this year, this amount will be much higher because it is subject to indexation”, he told PAP.

It is a “question of three to five years as to when Germany will create a fund that can serve to pay out money to [Polish] citizens”, Mularczyk added.

“I believe that every Polish citizen should receive an amount that will be negotiated,” he continued. “Each Polish family suffered human, material losses, was displaced, and property was lost.”

Part of any money gained from Germany should be also allocated for “development in Poland: education, the economy, healthcare and education”, added Mularczyk. “It should be a long-term programme for 30 to 50 years, which is to serve the Polish state, but also society.”

His committee’s report was unveiled by the ruling party on 1 September, the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939. However, soon after, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz rejected the claim, arguing that the issue is already “conclusively settled under international law”.

On a trip to Warsaw earlier this month, Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, also reiterated Berlin’s longstanding position that the issue of war reparations is “closed”.

Germany argues that Poland’s former communist government officially renounced the country’s claim to reparations in the 1950s. However, PiS rejects that, saying that no legally binding commitment was made and that reparations are still due.

Mularczyk told PAP that Germany now has a chance to “think it over and understand its wrong attitude towards Poland, and start talks, dialogue and negotiations”.

Main image credit: Henryk Jurko/Wikimedia Commons (under public domain)

Peter Kononczuk

Peter Kononczuk is senior editor at Notes from Poland. He was previously a journalist for Agence France-Presse (AFP) in London and Warsaw.