Filip Adwent

Sep. 10, 2004 19:24

Poland presses for World War II compensation
By ASSOCIATED PRESS

Polish lawmakers urged the Polish government Friday to seek compensation from Germany for World War II-era damages, a response to claims by some Germans for restitution of former property in Poland.

The resolution, passed unanimously by the lower house, also asserted that Poland has "no financial obligations whatsoever toward German citizens" for the property they lost when Polish borders shifted westward after the war.

The vote was 328-0 with one abstention.

Claims by former German property owners and their descendants have resurfaced as a powerful irritant in relations since the fall of the Iron Curtain - and more immediately since Poland's entry into the European Union on May 1.

A group calling itself the Prussian Claims Society has said it intends to file its first restitution claims in Polish and probably also in European courts this year.

Though Friday's measure is not legally binding, it puts pressure on the government of Prime Minister Marek Belka to raise the issue with Germany, Poland's largest trading partner.

"Poland has not received its due financial compensation or war damages for the enormous damage and material and nonmaterial losses caused by the German aggression, occupation, genocide and loss of independence," the resolution said.
It urged the government to "take due steps on the issue against the German government" and asked the government to present an estimate of damage that Poland suffered in the war.

The claim campaign has reopened old wounds in Poland, where the fate of Germans who fled or were expelled at the war's end is viewed with little sympathy given the death and destruction wrought by the Nazis in Poland.

In reply, Polish cities are tallying up damages - led by Warsaw, which was largely destroyed by German troops after the Nazis put down a 1944 uprising by Polish fighters in the capital.

Seeking to dampen Polish concerns, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder indicated in Warsaw last month that his government will advise courts to reject any German citizens' claims against Poland.

In Berlin, the Foreign Ministry would not comment on Friday's parliamentary resolution, but pointed to Schroeder's speech in Warsaw, in which he spoke out against "restitution claims that stand history on its head."

Postwar estimates put wartime material losses at about 40 percent of Poland's national wealth. On that basis, claims now are believed to be worth about US$640 billion, though there is no current overall estimate.

An estimated 12.5 million ethnic Germans were expelled or fled from Poland, then Czechoslovakia and other East European countries when the Third Reich collapsed and the Allies moved the region's borders toward the west.

Poland lost 6 million citizens under the Nazi occupation. For many Poles, the claim campaign suggests Germans are trying to blur the role of victim and perpetrator in World War II.

The daughter of a survivor of the Nazis' Auschwitz death camp recently became the first Pole to sue the German government for suffering inflicted by the Nazis during World War II.

Izabela Brodacka, 60, is demanding a symbolic US$7,300 in a Berlin court. She said it was a symbolic gesture for those who "suffered and who are dying in silence, seeing that history is being rewritten."

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