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Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau has signed a diplomatic note to Germany concerning reparations for World War Two, he said on Monday, formalising Poland’s demand for compensation ahead of a visit by Berlin’s top diplomat.
“(The note) expresses the position of the Polish minister of foreign affairs that the parties should take immediate steps to permanently and effectively… settle the issue of the consequences of aggression and German occupation,” Mr Rau told a news conference.
Foreign ministry spokesman Lukasz Jasina told reporters that Mr Rau would raise the issue with his German counterpart Annalena Baerbock during her visit to Warsaw on Tuesday.
Some six million Poles, including three million Polish Jews, were killed during the war and Warsaw was razed to the ground following a 1944 uprising in which about 200,000 civilians died.
In 1953, Poland’s then-communist rulers relinquished all claims to war reparations under pressure from the Soviet Union, which wanted to free East Germany, also a Soviet satellite, from any liabilities.
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The German Government is yet to respond to the demand.
The war was “one of the most terrible tragedies in our history,” President Andrzej Duda said during last month’s observances at the Westerplatte peninsula near Gdansk, one of the first places to be attacked in the Nazi invasion.
“Not only because it took our freedom, not only because it took our state from us, but also because this war meant millions of victims among Poland’s citizens and irreparable losses to our homeland and our nation,” President Duda said.
“Not only because it took our freedom, not only because it took our state from us, but also because this war meant millions of victims among Poland’s citizens and irreparable losses to our homeland and our nation,” President Duda said.
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