“Citizens of Western Europe and Israel, the United States, receive monthly benefits from the German government, while victims who survived World War II and live on the territory of Poland, Ukraine, Belarus – receive nothing. We are dealing with a complete violation of elementary standards of human rights”, said Arkadiusz Mularczyk, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Deputy Minister Mularczyk said that he had prepared a draft resolution of the Council of Europe on the issue. “I have submitted it to the Council of Europe, I hope that it will be the subject of further work and will lead to the preparation of a report describing this issue in a reliable manner”, he said and emphasised that the problem of lack of reparations for citizens was raised internationally in the broader context of lack of reparations for Poland. “This problem was not known to anyone in the West”, he added.

According to the deputy head of Polish diplomacy, German legislation treats national victims in a discriminatory way. “The division of the world by the Iron Curtain after World War II led to a situation of complete asymmetry in the benefits paid by Germany to the citizens of central and central Europe and to the citizens of Western Europe and Israel”, Mularczyk noted.

Poland considers that the continuation of such a situation in the face of history and international law is unacceptable. “The current situation violates basic standards for the protection of human rights, as described in United Nations resolutions and the European Convention on Human Rights, because it discriminates citizens and introduces division”, said Arkadiusz Mularczyk. “This is not only a historical-political problem, but also a deep problem of discrimination, a legal problem”, stressed the deputy foreign minister.

Adrian Andrzejewski