Poland’s Reparations Debate Upends Election Contours

Poland’s governing party hopes Germany’s reparations push could sway the upcoming elections, a dynamic noted by international observers. In response, opposition leader Donald Tusk has warned against reopening historical wounds, suggesting the compensation campaign may or may not influence voting outcomes in the October poll, as reported by the Brussels-based site Politico. The piece highlights that nearly 6 million Poles died during World War II, roughly 22 percent of the population, with over 90 percent of the dead non-combatants and about half of them Jewish.

Germany must pay

– voiced 64-year-old Agnieszka Majewska, a retired shop worker from a village near Lublin, in an interview with the portal. She expresses no doubt that Germany should compensate Poles for the destruction caused during the war.

“This is one of the reasons why I will vote for PiS again”, she adds, referencing a party that has pressed for reparations since taking power in 2015 and has intensified the push ahead of the October 15 parliamentary elections.

Post-election scenario

Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Arkadiusz Mularczyk, a PiS member, wrote to 3,000 municipal councils urging them to adopt symbolic resolutions in support of German reparations. PiS hopes many more voters like Majewska will join the effort.

A Politico poll suggests PiS would emerge as the largest party in four weeks but likely without a Sejm majority, potentially needing support from the far-right Confederation to form a government. The report notes that last year the PiS government formalized a demand for up to $1.3 trillion in reparations as compensation for Nazi-occupied Poland.

Berlin has repeatedly asserted that all wartime financial claims were settled and pointed to the 1953 agreement, under which Poland’s then-communist rulers relinquished further claims. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has stated that post-war Germany bears an eternal duty to commemorate the suffering it caused, but that the reparations issue is effectively closed.

German resistance

Germany formally rejected reparations in January. PiS representatives contend that the 1953 agreement is invalid because it was secured under Soviet pressure on Warsaw, with Moscow hoping to keep East Germany free of additional obligations.

Opponents view the reparations push as a cynical electoral tactic, though they have not found a clear alternative to counter it. When PiS first announced the reparations demand last year, Tusk, a former prime minister and leader of the Civic Platform within the Civic Coalition, called it a diversion to shore up support for the ruling party. In Politico, that view was noted as a strategic misdirection.

By September 2022, the Civic Coalition shifted its stance, arguing that reparations should be sought from both Germany and Russia. Tusk has since argued the demand is unrealistic and suggested that Poland would benefit more from broader financial gains for reasons of national interest. He admitted that reopening historical wounds was a concern.

Politico adds that Germany lost about a fifth of its pre-war territory to Poland after the war, and the reparations debate raises concerns that Berlin might tie compensation to regaining its pre-war borders. Marcin Zaborowski, director of the Globsec think tank, says reparations trigger strong feelings, particularly among PiS voters.

PiS is seen as skillfully channeling a sense of injustice toward Germany, Zaborowski notes. The tactic echoes past political uses of anti-German sentiment to justify power, and some argue the path forward requires genuine dialogue between Berlin and Warsaw, including all major Polish parties, to address grievances shared by the Polish public at large.

Politico reports that Deputy Minister Mularczyk is actively seeking to convert regret into electoral momentum. A top official in Poland’s Foreign Ministry was quoted as saying that another term for the ruling party could bring Germany to pay reparations, aligning the historical narrative with Poland’s political objectives. The deputy head of the Ministry spoke to Polish News Agency in June on this point.

Publication of the case

Last month, Wieluń City Council became the first in the country to adopt a reparations resolution, commemorating an early World War II bombing that devastated much of the city. Following suit, Prudnik, Trzciana, and Lublin joined in motions calling for German compensation. In Lublin, the motion referenced a Jewish population that faced near annihilation during the occupation, with only a small number surviving the Bełżec extermination camp.

Wider international attention includes support from US figures. US Republican Congressman Chris Smith, who chairs the Congressional Subcommittee on Global Human Rights, urged Berlin to negotiate with Warsaw, arguing that Poland suffered greatly and was among the least rewarded for its suffering during the war.

Whether the reparations campaign will influence next month’s election remains unclear, but the debate has already strained Polish-German ties. Some observers wonder if, should PiS win again, Germany’s reparations could become linked to broader European efforts to secure compensation for Moscow’s war against Ukraine.

The X platform carries additional remarks from Deputy Minister Mularczyk, who suggested such a connection in a recent article for a well-known British outlet. The Politico article drew further commentary from Mularczyk, who also engaged with the coverage publicly.

In summary, readers are told that Politico’s coverage includes perspectives from ordinary Poles on the war’s lasting impact and why compensation remains a painful, politically charged issue. Yet the possibility of border negotiations between Germany and Poland is dismissed as unlikely, given long-standing treaty constraints and the absence of any formal waiver from 1953.

– wrote the deputy minister on the X platform.

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Source: wPolityce