Poland’s foreign minister on Monday officially requested the payment of 6.2 trillion zloty (1.32 trillion euros) from Germany as a result of the country’s invasion and occupation of Poland during World War II. The sum arrived at includes atrocities committed against Polish Jews by other Poles.
In a document handed by Poland’s foreign minister Zbigniew Rau to Germany’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday, Rau expresses his view that the two countries should take action “without delay” to address the damage caused by German occupation of Poland in a “lasting and complex, legally binding as well as material way.”
On September 1st, the 83rd anniversary of the German invasion, Poland’s government released a three-volume, several thousand-page report, compiled over five years, detailing where “Nazi German atrocities” took place, along with their death tolls.
Controversially, the report includes atrocities carried out by Poles against Polish Jews, including the infamous Jedwabne pogrom where some 300 Jews were burned alive.
In intentionally obfuscating Polish crimes against Jews, critics have labelled the report as “propagandistic”, and a “domestic populist ploy” to rally dwindling support for Poland’s governing political party Law and Justice (PiS) ahead of next year’s parliamentary election.
Andrzej Duda
Polish President Andrzej Duda, and member of the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS), has voiced his support for Poland seeking reparations from Germany (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)
Przemek Czarnecka, research assistant and historian at the University of Warsaw, told the JC: “This report deliberately includes crimes committed by Poles against Polish Jews to maximise reparations owed, while reducing blame on the people of Poland.
“It is just another attempt by this government, and its propaganda arm the IPN (Polish Institute for National Remembrance), to act as victim and not perpetrator – to focus on the good deeds of Christian Poles to Jews in that period rather than the nuanced, gruesome reality.”
Germany, despite earlier this month having granted Holocaust survivors a further £1billion in compensation payments, has so far rebuffed attempts by Poland to bring up the question of reparations and considers the matter closed.
According to a German Foreign Office spokesperson: “The German government’s position is unchanged: the reparations question is closed. Poland renounced further reparations a long time ago, in 1953, and has since repeatedly confirmed this.”
Some holocaust researchers argue however that the controversial report should not be so flippantly ignored.
François Guesnet, Chairman of the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies, and professor of Modern Jewish History at University College London, told the JC: “There was never a proper accounting of the losses suffered by Poles (including Polish Jews) and Poland in consequence of the German attack on Poland in 1939. Whether the conclusion of such an accounting are 'reparations' is a different question.
“The Polish government should try to establish a comprehensive understanding of crimes committed by Poles against Jews during the German occupation, and in its aftermath. Such an endeavour would require substantial funds for research as well as the involvement of experts from abroad, including Europe, Israel, and the US and Canada.”
In recent years, efforts by the Polish government to frame the Holocaust as a crime perpetrated solely by Germany, including the passing of a 2019 law making it illegal to blame Poland for Nazi crimes during World War II, has put it at odds with leading 20th century historians, Holocaust researchers, and the Israeli government.
This summer, Israel announced that it was halting its high schools’ trips to Poland to learn about the Holocaust in large part due to the Polish government’s insistence that it sign off on the curriculum, which Israel interpreted to mean removing honest conversations about Polish collaborators.
