Poland’s President Karol Nawrocki has marked the anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War by renewing calls for Germany to pay reparations for its invasion and occupation.
At the same ceremony, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk countered, saying: “We must understand who is the enemy and who is our ally,” and claiming that only a “united Europe” could keep Poland safe.
“To build a partnership with our western neighbour based on the foundations of truth and good relations, we must finally settle the issue of reparations from the German state, which I unequivocally demand,” declared the opposition Conservatives (PiS)-allied Nawrocki in Gdańsk on September 1, the anniversary of the start of the Second World War.
“Eternal shame to the German and Soviet murderers,” said Nawrocki, adding: “If you have killed and stolen, you must confess your sin, you must apologise, and you must make amends.
“For our common future, for the security of our alliances, we are waiting for reparations from the German state,” continued Nawrocki,
He expressed his hope that “the Polish government will strengthen the voice of the Polish president in seeking the truth and honest relations with our western neighbour”.
Tusk, who leads a centre-left coalition government, took a different view when speaking at the same ceremony. He argued that to prevent an “attack on our homeland, we must understand who is the enemy and who is our ally, we must understand clearly where this threat comes from today and with whom we should unite in the effort to defend Poland and the entire western world”.
“A united Europe, NATO, our allies – this is the lesson we learned from that solitude in 1939. Poland can never again be alone. It can never be weak,” Tusk added.
In 2021, Poland’s former government, led by the PiS, submitted a claim for $1.3 trillion (€1.1 trillion) in reparations that it claimed Germany owed Poland.
The invasion of September 1939 saw Poland overrun by Hitler’s Germany from the west and later by the USSR from the east, ushering in six years of occupation that led to the deaths of 6 million Polish citizens – representing 17 per cent of the country’s pre-war population.
German occupation resulted in the destruction of many Polish cities, including the capital Warsaw and the loss of substantial cultural heritage destroyed or stolen by the invaders.
After Tusk’s government replaced the PiS in December 2023, it ended the official push for reparations. It has argued, though, that Germany should still provide some form of unspecified “compensation” to Poland for the death and destruction it wrought during the war.
Yet successive German governments have said the country had already settled its reparations claims after the war through a deal done with the USSR from which Poland was to benefit.
There is no evidence of Poland having benefited from the reparations provided by Germany to the USSR and at the time of the “award”, Poland was ruled by a Communist government installed by the Soviets in 1944.
