“The expectation is that if the team functions well, a report on requesting reparations to Russia will undoubtedly be prepared during the new term of the Sejm,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Arkadiusz Mularczyk.
During Thursday’s press conference, the Deputy Foreign Minister announced that he had sent a letter to all parliamentarians and senators of the new term of the Sejm and the Senate with a call to continue the actions “aimed at regulating the issue of reparations, compensations’ and compensation that Poland is entitled to from Germany due to the German aggression and occupation in the years 1939-1945.”
In the letter, Mularczyk also raised the issue of seeking reparations in the future, “after the report has been prepared, including from Russia.”
When asked about the stage of work on this report, he described it as a preliminary report.
We are in the initial stages of work, but we must not forget that the team that prepared the report on the German war losses also worked for almost five years, but there was also the COVID pandemic and we missed two years. So we can expect that if the team works and has the opportunity to work, such a report will undoubtedly be prepared in the next term of the Sejm.
– he said.
Research continues
He added that scientists and historians from Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania are conducting research in Polish and foreign archives.
We must not forget that we lost almost 50%. the pre-war area, which today falls within Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania, therefore there are some difficulties in collecting the general material, summarizing it and preparing a report, but this work is still ongoing, it is started
– emphasized the Deputy Minister.
Mularczyk, referring to the call for “decisive continuation of actions” regarding reparations from Germany, recalled two Sejm resolutions – of September 14 last year and of 2004 – on the basis of which the Sejm “obligates the Polish government to take actions undertakings aimed at obtaining reparations, compensation and redress from Germany.
The way I see it is of course that this issue should be on the agenda of conversations and parliamentary meetings that parliamentarians hold, whether in international forums, in the Council of Europe, the UN, the OSCE, but also in bilateral Polish – German relations.
– said Mularczyk.
But undoubtedly a certain group of parliamentarians will become ministers and work in government administration, and it is important that this issue is also put on the international agenda, especially in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but also in the Prime Minister’s Office.
– added.
When asked about the issue raised in the letter of “popularizing knowledge about the sensitive and painful experiences of the Second World War in society, and especially among representatives of the younger generation,” the Deputy Minister said that “unfortunately we have to fight with defective memory codes.”
Knowledge about war
First of all, as he noted, knowledge about the Second World War is decreasing: about the victims, about who the aggressor was, about the consequences of the war.
The world perceives the Second World War in our countries primarily through the prism of the Holocaust; the consequences and losses suffered by Poland are little known
– he said. He added that in Germany itself there is “very little awareness of what the German occupation was like in Poland, and many Germans believe that the issue of reparations and compensation has already been closed (…), so they have no knowledge of the facts. and realities.”
The main problem is that this creates an element of building false memory codes in Germany and the rest of the world, where statements about Nazi crimes, Polish concentration camps and Polish ghettos are often repeated.
– said Mularczyk. He noted “that there are elements that we must fight because they build a false image of Poland and Poles in the world in an absolutely negative way and are of course part of the activities of German soft power.”
On September 1 last year, a report was presented on the losses suffered by Poland as a result of German aggression and occupation during World War II. They were estimated at 6 trillion, 220 billion, 609 million PLN.
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edy/PAP
Source: wPolityce