Poland asks Germany for 1.35 billion for World War II damage, almost double its GDP

Poland will officially ask Germany World War II reparations by value €1.35 billion in a report by the government party Law and Justice in which the damage caused by the Nazi invasion.

“Today is the day to address the issue in the international dialogue and put it on the agenda of German-Polish relations,” said the leader of Law and Justice, Jaroszlaw Kaczinski, during the presentation of the report.

“The goal, probably in the long term, is to receive compensation for everything that Germany and the German nation did to us between 1939 and 1945,” he added.

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Kaczinski highlighted that many countries in the world received compensation, even if they were small, while Poland has received nothing.

Germany, according to Kaczynski, has not paid for his war crimes against Poland, nor did he actively seek to punish Nazi war criminals.

“Different legal acts created a de facto abolition system. Even people who were guilty of the death of tens of thousands of people were able to live normally in Germany and sometimes held official positions in Germany,” he said.

Arkadiusz Mularczyk, responsible for the preparation of the report, said that the result of the activities of Nazi Germany during World War II halved the Polish capacities to create wealth.

“All the partial values ​​of the demographic and material losses of Poland together give the sum of 6,220,609 billion zloty (approximately 1.35 billion euros). Calculated in dollars, with the exchange rate of the end of 2021, it is equivalent to 1,532,170 million,” Mularczyk said.

According to Kaczynski, the sum indicated in the report is conservative and could be much higher.

“It’s not a big one. It’s realistic”

“It is a large sum, but considering that war reparations are paid for decades, the German economy will be able to handle it. It will not be a big burden, and we can say that it’s realistic“, said the leader of nationalist Law and Justice.

The current report consists of 3 volumes. The first contains an estimate of Poland’s material and non-material losses during the war, the second contains photographic documentation of the atrocities committed by the Nazis, and the third volume lists all the crimes committed by the Nazis in Poland during World War II.

“During World War II, Poland suffered the greatest losses compared to the total population and national wealth of all European countries,” Mularczyk said.

“The damage was caused not only by the war itself, but also by the German occupation policy,” he added.

According to the report, as a result of the war, Poland lost 77,900 square kilometers of its territory. Poland’s population fell from 35.1 million people in 1939 to 23.9 million people in 1946, while 590,000 people were left with various types of disabilities.