Polish Leaders Criticize Latest German Compensation Claims
Deutsche Welle
December 16, 2006
A move to seek compensation from Poland by Germans expelled at the end of World War II continued to fuel tensions in both countries Saturday.
Some 12 to 14 million ethnic
Germans were victims of mass expulsions from Poland, the Czech Republic and other countries in Eastern Europe in the aftermath of World War II.
Many are represented by expellees' groups like the Prussian Trust, whose compensation claim against Poland was confirmed on Friday by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
"If the Germans want money for the property they lost they should address their demands to the US, Britain and the heirs of the Soviet Union," said Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, a former foreign minister of Poland.
These three states decided the fate of the ethnic German population in the regions of Silesia, Pomerania and East Prussia, he told the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita.
Bartoszewski was referring to the 1945 Potsdam Agreement which among other things redrafted Germany's borders, giving control of East Prussia, Silesia and part of Pomerania to Poland.
[...]
Polish PM criticizes renewed German nationalism
Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the president's twin brother, on Saturday meanwhile slammed what he called Germany's return to nationalist ideology and "radical" questioning of history.
"We observe in Germany a process deeper than a simple attitude of one government or another," he said in an interview with Rzeczpospolita.
"It's a re-nationalization of politics, an exceptionally radical calling into question of historical judgements."
In his strongest attack on Germany since coming to power, the Polish prime minister lamented
"the obvious anti-Polish sentiment, that's often racist, of some Germans."
Talking about the Prussian Trust's claim, Kaczynski said he expected the German government to take a stronger stance.
"Germany hasn't fully explained its legal position faced with property in Poland," he said. "Its declarations in this area remain insufficient."
He deplored the fact that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has rejected his proposal to sign a bilateral treaty to mutually abandon future financial claims.
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