Thread by @Xy5Z89

-Threade-

#Poland #Germany #Warsaw #WorldWar2 #Holocaust #reperations

If what the Polish MP Arkadiusz Mularczyk recently announced is true, then the bill is ready. Shortly before the 75th anniversary of the end of the war on May 8,

the politician informed the government party Law and Justice (PiS) that the committee he led, set up in 2017 to determine the war damage caused by Nazi Germany in World War II, had ended its work. For the time being, however, the report will be kept under wraps -

and thus also the amount that Poland could demand from Germany. "There's still a good time for that," said Mularczyk at the time. If Federal Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) visits Warsaw this Tuesday, this reparation question, which Poland has left open,

is likely to resonate again. During a visit to Maas last August, Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz said: "We have no reason to shy away from this topic."

The question of whether Germany can and should be held financially accountable for the immeasurable war damage in Poland has been on the agenda - sometimes hotter, sometimes less hotly - since the right-wing PiS came to the government in 2015.

According to a survey recently published as part of the "German-Polish Barometer", the reparation question is now seen as the main problem in relations. It is called by 58 percent of Poles and 52 percent of Germans.

The Polish government has not officially dealt with the question so far. According to the chairman of the German-Polish parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Manuel Sarrazin (Greens), this could change soon.

In Warsaw there was a "general disappointment" about the concrete results of German-Polish cooperation. This could lead to reparations after the presidential elections at the end of June "being raised at government level".

But then there is a serious conflict between Berlin and Warsaw, because the German government rejects any claims for Polish reparations. The question of German reparations had "been settled in the past, legally and politically," she had already explained in 2017 -

referring to a Polish waiver from 1953. A state of affairs report by the Bundestag's scientific service confirmed this view last year. Manuel Sarrazin believes that the "brusque rejection" of the reparation claims brought forward from Poland in the past is

"legally formally correct, but morally and politically unjustifiable". Germany "cannot declare the debate over if it is not yet the first victim of the German war of aggression for our Polish partners and friends."

From Sarrazin's point of view, the "rather ignorant handling" of the claims from Poland has caused considerable damage. These should now be met "with empathy and courtesy". Germany must show "that it is ready to do its homework".

Sarrazin is now submitting six concrete proposals in a paper. Germany should set up a fund as part of a humanitarian gesture, from which medical costs for surviving victims of war and occupation can be borne.

Another fund should be used as a "gesture of goodwill" to compensate victims or their children who have not been taken into account in previous payments. There are "blind spots of German guilt that were hardly taken into account during the war and occupation in Poland".

This applies to so-called guerrilla and hostage shootings, but also to death lists of the Reich Security Main Office from the first weeks of the war and the victims of the "Volksdeutsche (folk German) resistance".

A framework to support Polish culture should also be created. The aim of the German occupation policy was not least to destroy the Polish culture. For places where Germans have committed war crimes, Sarrazin demands "symbolic compensation".

In addition, if possible, all of the crew's murder victims should be documented. A "right and important step" is also Germany's willingness to "make a substantial contribution to a large cultural project in Poland".

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