Poland’s top diplomat on Tuesday urged Germany to provide “financial compensation” over losses his country sustained at the hands of Nazi troops during World War II.
The call by Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski came during his first visit to Berlin, after a new pro-EU government came to power in Poland in December.
It echoes a similar push in September 2020 by the head of Poland’s populist Law and Justice party, who estimated that Germany should pay 1.3 trillion euros ($1.4 trillion) as “compensation for the deaths of more than 5.2 million Polish citizens”.
Speaking on Welt TV after talks with his German counterpart Annalena Baerbock, Sikorski said “that which Germany did to Poland during the Second World War was terrible and cruel”.
He said it would be helpful if Germany “were to find a creative solution for expressing this suffering, to express regret and do something good for the people who survived this period”.
“And this ethical reflection on the past should then result in financial compensation,” he said, without providing any figures.
The issue of WWII compensation had already strained relations between Berlin and the previous Polish government led by Law and Justice, which had insisted that Germany had a “moral duty” in the matter.
Germany has often rejected such claims, pointing to a 1953 decision by Poland to renounce claims against East Germany.
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