Poland is today sending a diplomatic note to all countries in the European Union, NATO and Council of Europe regarding its claim for up to $1.3 trillion in war reparations from Germany, as it seeks to build international awareness of and support for its efforts to obtain compensation.
“We want to launch an international discussion about Germany’s attitude, about how Germany…did not settle up with Poland,” deputy foreign minister Arkadiusz Mularczyk told the Polish Press Agency (PAP) today.
“Today a diplomatic note will be sent to all the countries of the Council of Europe, the European Union, NATO countries, our key partners and friends in the world,” he added. That amounts to 50 countries in total, he said.
💬@arekmularczyk, @MSZ_RP: W nocie skierowanej dziś do ministrów spraw zagranicznych 50 państw informujemy o powstaniu stanowiska pełnomocnika ds. reparacji wojennych. Działania rządu są nakierowane na informowanie opinii międzynarodowej i domaganie się uczciwości.#wieszwięcej pic.twitter.com/khsjGl6eLC
— TOP TVP INFO (@TOPTVPINFO) November 23, 2022
Mularczyk has been the driving force behind the Polish government’s claim that Germany owes Poland reparations for the damage caused during its brutal occupation between 1939 and 1945. Berlin, however, insists that the issue was legally settled decades ago and that it owes nothing more.
“The Germans do not want to talk about this, they do not want to conclude an international agreement, [and] there is also no legal path for the victims,” Mularczyk told PAP. “We will systematically inform the international public about this.”
Mularczyk said the diplomatic note would underline that Germany has not paid compensation to Polish citizens for the devastation and huge losses caused during its occupation and has not returned looted works of art.
On 1 September – the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 – the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party published a report produced by a committee headed by Mularczyk that calculated Poland’s uncompensated losses at around $1.3 trillion.
The following month, foreign minister Zbigniew Rau issued a diplomatic note to Germany outlining Poland’s claims. Mularczyk said today that Warsaw has not yet received a response from Berlin.
Germany has consistently argued that Poland’s communist government officially renounced the country’s claim to reparations in the 1950s, and that this position was confirmed by later governments, including after the fall of communism.
However, PiS rejects that line of reasoning, saying that no legally binding commitment was made and that reparations are still due.
Mularczyk recently warned that, if Germany continues to maintain that it does not owe reparations, “they’ll have a problem” because Poland would remind “people everywhere possible, at all international forums, of German war crimes and the fact that Germany has a debt to Poland”.
He also said that, the longer Germany refuses to pay, the higher the eventual bill will be, because the $1.3 trillion figure was calculated at the end of last year and will rise “because it is subject to indexation”.
Around 17% of Poland’s population was killed during the Nazi-German occupation in World War Two, a higher proportion than in any other country. Poland also saw many of its cities reduced to rubble and its cultural heritage looted and destroyed.
Main image credit: M. Wolagiewicz/Central Photographic Agency (CAF)/Wikimedia Commons (under public domain)
Peter Kononczuk is senior editor at Notes from Poland. He was previously a journalist for Agence France-Presse (AFP) in London and Warsaw.
