The report on reparations is supposed to show the scale of Poland’s destruction and start a conversation with Germany on the issue, Jarosław Sellin, deputy minister for culture and national heritage. On 15 July, Law and Justice president Jarosław Kaczyński announced that “if it goes well, the first part of the report on Polish losses during World War II will be announced on 1 September”.

“Germany is a rich country, it can afford many things. It is the richest country in Europe with the strongest economy and it is the legal successor of the pre-war and wartime German state, so it should be able to afford it,” said Deputy Minister Sellin.

He recalled that Germany paid war reparations to other countries and described the omission of Poland in this context as “very unfair”.

“Someone calculated that 70 countries received such reparations. Poland got virtually nothing. This is very unfair”, he stated. Deputy Minister Sellin added that one should not forget that Poland lost relatively the most citizens in relation to its population before the war and that it was destroyed the most of all countries in occupied Europe. All this was caused by the Germans. Justice must be done here”, said the deputy head of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

It should be recalled that in the previous term of the Sejm, since September 2017, there was a Parliamentary Group for Estimating the Amount of Compensation Due to Poland from Germany for Damage Caused during World War II, which was headed by MP Arkadiusz Mularczyk.

Two days ago (8 August), in an interview with Rzeczpospolita, he expressed his conviction that “there is a good chance that Germany will pay reparations to Poland within a few years, or maybe even sooner. The stigma of the unsettled crimes of their ancestors will be very damaging to Germany’s image in international relations around the world. After all, Germany wants to be considered a modern “moral superpower”.

Adrian Andrzejewski