Warsaw is setting up a special research institute tasked with studying the damage inflicted on Poland by Nazi Germany, and pushing for reparations from Berlin, the Polish premier revealed.
The Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, made the announcement in an interview with Germany’s DPA news agency, parts of which were published this weekend.
Morawiecki said he had signed a document that set in motion the establishment of the institute, which will be named after prominent Polish resistance fighter Jan Karski, because Poland was treated very badly during and after WW II, receiving no funds for reparations.
The institute will be systematizing various existing studies in the field and pursuing claims against Germany. The special parliamentary commission set up in 2017 would be releasing its findings on the damages stemming from Nazi Germany’s occupation of Poland.
According to Warsaw’s earlier estimations, which were based on a 1946 inventory, the damages amount to €800 billion ($901 billion).
However, in 2019, a member of the commission suggested the bill could actually exceed €887 billion ($1 trillion). That same year, Poland renewed its pressure on Germany over the reparations issue to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the start of WWII.
Warsaw is not alone in its efforts to make Berlin pay for the death and destruction the Nazis wreaked on occupied nations. Back in April, Greece also renewed its demands of Germany.
Germany, in turn, insists the issue was resolved back in 1990, the year of its reunification, when the so-called Two-Plus-Four treaty was signed between East and West Germany and WWII allies the USSR, the US, Britain, and France.
In the document, there was no mention of reparations of any kind, which, in Berlin’s view, lays the issue to rest for good. However, significantly, neither Poland nor Greece were parties to the agreement.
Berlin also points to a 1953 waiver on reparations that was signed by the Polish People’s Republic and the German Democratic Republic, but the Polish government claims it was approved only under duress from Moscow, both nations being part of the Soviet Union’s eastern bloc at the time.
In 2018, the head of the ruling Law and Justice party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, claimed Poland had never given up its claim to reparations from Germany.
RT. com / ABC Flash Point News 2021.
As a matter of principle, reparations after the fact for damage inflicted in war time are morally unjustifiable.
It is, simply morally WRONG to make one generation pay (through their taxes) for something done by a previous generation. In simple terms, why should anyone have to pay for something they didn’t do?
Something that happened before they were even born…..War is nasty and unpleasant. But a military victory should, and must, be an end to the matter.
Except for the Zionist Ashkenazi Jews who have collected their compensations all the way?
The US mastered the skill of losing wars without getting militarily defeated on its own soil. Nuclear weapons don’t guarantee that you’re going to win a war, but they guarantee that you will not lose to the point of being at the mercy of another country. I guess they give assurance that you will not pay reparations. That’s their magic!
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-6119c5dfbee134313d09f6a81bff0b61-c
Nuclear weapons used against war compensations?
Imagine what 25 million killed Russians would be worth?