Poland's open request to Germany for reparations

2024-03-20 08:34:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

The difficult past is burdening the relations between Poles and Germans even today. 85 years after the German attack on Poland, which triggered the Second World War, the issue of German reparations payments to the neighboring country is back on the agenda. "Paying the bill would be historically justified," Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin on February 2, 2024. On the issue of moral and material reparations, "Germany still has something to do," but not that in order to aggravate German-Polish relations, Tusk added. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski had earlier called on his counterpart, Annalena Baerbock, to "deal creatively with the difficult historical legacy".

Disputes over reparations

Claims for compensation are not new. For eight years, Poland's right-wing PiS government tried to make domestic political capital with anti-German rhetoric. The head of the PiS party, Jaroslav Kaczynski, repeatedly stressed that Germany had not yet paid its historic bill. According to one report, Germany owes Poland the equivalent of more than 1.3 trillion euros: for the forced labor of some 2.1 million Poles, the loss of eastern territories to the Soviet Union, and the loss of 196,000 forcibly Germanized children.

Poland's open request to Germany for reparations

In September 2022, the Polish Sejm passed a resolution calling on Germany to take responsibility - also with the votes of the then-opposition led by Donald Tusk. However, the opposition insisted that the word "reparations" be replaced by the word "improvement". Political opponents are trying to discredit Tusk as a "state traitor" and "Berlin agent" because of this issue. In 1953, Poland gave up reparations, i.e. state-to-state claims. This is the prevailing opinion of jurists and historians from both countries. This does not affect individual compensation claims of Nazi victims.

Poland's open request to Germany for reparations

Poland's 2022 diplomatic note to Germany, 50 other countries, the UN, NATO and the US, which the PiS government did not want to make public, did not mention reparations - as it turned out later. At that time, the reparations commissioner of the Polish government, Arkadiusz Mularczyk, visited Berlin. His request for a Bundestag debate on reparations payments to Poland, as in the case of Greece, remained unfulfilled.

Since the change of government in Warsaw, the reparations debate has returned. Late last month, when President Andrzej Duda awarded medals of honor to the authors of the war damage report, President Duda described Tuski's waiver of reparations demands as "a disgrace." He questioned the relinquishment of Poland in 1953, which Germany regards as final.

Markus Meckel explains why the issue of reparations was taboo for Poland even after the fall of communism. As the first democratic minister of the GDR, he participated in the 2+4 negotiations between the two German states and the allies. "It was strategically smart to waive reparations," Meckel said in an interview with DW. "Then the border issue had absolute priority. Anyone who raises this issue again today risks that the nationalists in both countries will reopen the border issue."

Policy change

The issue of reparations is closed under international law, but morally it is still open. This opinion prevails today in both Berlin and Warsaw. In the Polish capital, Deputy Foreign Minister Wladyslaw Teofil Bartosiewicz, whose father was an Auschwitz prisoner and foreign minister, confirmed to radio station RMF FM on January 22, 2024 that his department was working on a reparations concept. Responsible for this is the Secretary of State for European Affairs, experienced diplomat Marek Pravda, former ambassador of Poland to Germany and the EU.

Poland's open request to Germany for reparations

Berlin also expresses its willingness to cooperate: "We are in a constructive and cooperative exchange with the Polish side on issues of remembrance and reconciliation with our eventful shared history," the Foreign Ministry spokesman told DW. "We want to shape this in a future-oriented way and together with Poland. At the same time, we believe that the issue of reparations has been resolved." The resumption of bilateral government cooperation that was interrupted by PiS is also on the table again. Germany and Poland together with France are again talking tripartitely, in the format of the Weimar Triangle.

Concrete requests and symbolic gestures

Poland's open request to Germany for reparations

Germany has many opportunities to correct, explains Nyke Slawik (Ecological Party Bündnis90), whose father comes from Poland. "All democratic parties in the Bundestag agree on deepening cooperation with Poland," explains the Bundestag deputy. First and foremost, Slavik mentions compensation for individual victims. Specifically, a pension fund and cost recovery are being discussed, for example for medication and treatment of about 45,000 Poles Slavik would also like to see more speed in the construction of the German-Polish House in the center of Berlin.

Slavik sees Germany as having a duty to protect Poland's lost cultural assets. A prime example is the reconstruction of the Saxon Palace in Warsaw, which the German occupiers blew up after the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.

Shared security instead of documents

Markus Meckel, one of the architects of the reconciliation between the two nations, wants to give Poland more security guarantees. Following the Russian attack on Ukraine, Meckel considers closer security cooperation between Germany and Poland essential and is committed to a greater German presence on NATO's eastern flank. Meckel goes further than many German politicians and calls for Germany to work together with Poland for Ukraine's NATO membership.

The issue of reparations remains on the agenda in German-Polish relations, even if it is now called an improvement. Over the past eight years, Berlin has kept its distance from the trillion-dollar demands of the previous government in Warsaw. However, today in the German capital there is a renewed willingness to talk about even the most difficult topics./ DW