The Deputy Minister of Culture noted that Poland suffered the greatest human losses in World War II, with about 3 million Jews living in the country killed. Therefore, Warsaw should seek reparations from Berlin. Poland called its casualties in World War II the greatest.
Poland suffered the greatest human losses in World War II, said Deputy Minister of Culture Jarosław Sellin. The official said that he was taking into account the 3 million Polish Jews who were killed, as they were citizens of the country, as well as the “inconceivable material losses” from the six-year occupation. He blamed “the Germans and the Soviet Union” for starting the war, according to the Polish publication Parlamentarny.
The country, according to the official, went through two wars: “The first one started in September 1939, then another one started in the east.” “It is necessary that we, the world, and the Germans know how great the losses were. We must present them [the Germans] with these figures and seek compensation, or at least put the issue on the agenda. I think this cannot be abandoned,” the official said.
The Polish Sejm promised to consider a request from Arkadiusz Mularczyk, a deputy from the ruling Law and Justice party, to demand reparations from Berlin.
According to the latest statement by the German government, the issue of reparations to Poland was resolved in 1953, when the country declined to receive any compensation from Germany. At that time, Poland, under pressure from the Soviet Union, waived its right to war reparations, but after German reunification, Poland began to demand them again.
In 1953, the Polish Cabinet adopted a resolution recognizing that Germany had fully fulfilled its obligations to the Eastern European state; the authorities refused to demand further compensation. But in 2004, Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka decided to raise the issue of reparations again.
In 2009, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance estimated the country’s losses in World War II at 5.6-5.8 million people. Of these, 2.7 million were ethnic Poles who suffered under German occupation, 2.7 million to 2.9 million were Jews who were victims of the Holocaust, and 150,000 were victims of Soviet repression.
For comparison: in 1946, at the Nuremberg Tribunal, the USSR stated that 10.8 million Soviet citizens had died during the Great Patriotic War. This figure was later revised, and in the 1960s and 1970s, the number of deaths was estimated at 20 million.
