Poland has given official form to its demands for reparations from Germany. Foreign Minister Rau signed a diplomatic note addressed to his German counterpart Baerbock.

Shortly before a visit by Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock to Warsaw, Poland’s government took another step to reinforce its demands for reparations from Germany. Poland’s Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau signed a diplomatic note to be handed over to the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin.

“It expresses the Polish Foreign Minister’s belief that the parties should take immediate steps towards a permanent, comprehensive and final legal and material settlement of the consequences of German aggression and occupation from 1939 to 1945,” Rau said. According to a spokesman, the Foreign Office in Berlin initially did not want to comment on the Polish announcements.

The national-conservative PiS government in Warsaw has repeatedly raised demands for reparations in recent years. At the beginning of September, a parliamentary commission in Warsaw presented an expert report in which the damage caused by World War II in Poland was estimated at more than 1.3 trillion euros. At the same time, PiS boss Jaroslaw Kaczynski renewed the demand for compensation payments.

Rau did not name a specific amount. However, he made it clear that according to Warsaw, a regulation must include “the payment of compensation by Germany for the material and non-material damage that the Polish state suffered due to this aggression and occupation”. Victims of the German occupiers and their family members would also have to be compensated. Regulation must also be found for the stolen cultural assets and archives.

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