i polacchi vogliono i danni di guerra
Poland Seeks Nazi Wartime Damages Over $1.3 Trillion Losses
- Demands follow scathing anti-German rhetoric from Warsaw
- Estimated damages are more than twice Poland’s economic output
A German tank moves through Warsaw, Poland, in 1944.
Source: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
By
Wojciech Moskwa
1 settembre 2022 13:56 CESTUpdated on1 settembre 2022 16:09 CEST
Poland’s ruling nationalists issued a controversial demand for World War II compensation from Germany, saying destruction wrought by the Nazi regime caused damage worth about $1.3 trillion.
The sum, equivalent to more than twice Poland’s annual economic output, revives a fraught debate over reparations nearly eight decades after the war ended. Long an issue for Poland’s Law & Justice party, the fresh claim comes along with increasingly harsh rhetoric directed at Germany a year before an election that will test the party’s sagging popularity.
And even though the loss of millions of lives is still seared in the nation’s memory, the legal prospects for the claim are thin -- and Germany has consistently said that reparations are long-since settled.
The report on wartime losses was unveiled Thursday in Warsaw on the 83rd anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s invasion, which triggered World War II. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the ruling party leader and Poland’s most powerful politician, said Germany has never really compensated the country for the atrocities.
“Germany invaded Poland and then caused us serious losses,” Kaczynski said at the ornate ceremony in the capital’s rebuilt Royal Castle on Thursday, attended by top party officials. “We can’t simply accept it and move on just because someone believes that somehow Poland stands lower than other countries.”
Still, Kaczynski conceded that “we are not expecting quick success.” The country’s communist-led government renounced its right to seek payments from Germany in 1953, though some historians argue it was done under duress from the Soviet Union.
Donald Tusk, the leader of the main opposition party, accused Kaczynski of electioneering. The ruling party has had to contend with the country’s cost-of-living crisis and the government’s inability to tap European Union recovery funds due to Poland’s democratic backsliding.
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