Al Mayadeen English

  • Ar
  • Es
  • x
Al Mayadeen English

Slogan

  • News
    • Politics
    • Economy
    • Sports
    • Arts&Culture
    • Health
    • Miscellaneous
    • Technology
    • Environment
  • Articles
    • Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Blog
    • Features
  • Videos
    • NewsFeed
    • Video Features
    • Explainers
    • TV
    • Digital Series
  • Infographs
  • In Pictures
  • • LIVE
News
  • Politics
  • Economy
  • Sports
  • Arts&Culture
  • Health
  • Miscellaneous
  • Technology
  • Environment
Articles
  • Opinion
  • Analysis
  • Blog
  • Features
Videos
  • NewsFeed
  • Video Features
  • Explainers
  • TV
  • Digital Series
Infographs
In Pictures
  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Asia-Pacific
  • Europe
  • Latin America
  • MENA
  • Palestine
  • US & Canada
BREAKING
An earthquake strikes the Turkish city of Konya, with aftershocks felt in Ankara.
Reuters, citing a senior Iranian official: Tehran would only ship its highly enriched uranium abroad if US sanctions were lifted "verifiably and effectively".
Reuters, citing a senior Iranian official: Iran has not received any fresh proposal from the United States to resolve a decades-long nuclear dispute.
Ansar Allah leader Sayyed Abdul Malik al-Houthi: The horrific scale of crimes committed by the Israeli enemy in the Gaza Strip clearly constitutes genocide.
Pezeshkian: We believe in negotiations, but not in threats and imposed dictates, and we will never back down from preserving Iran's dignity.
Pezeshkian: All enemy efforts revolve around inciting sedition within Iran.
Al Mayadeen's correspondent: Fifteen Palestinians, including 11 children and one woman, were martyred in an Israeli airstrike targeting a prayer hall in Jabalia camp, in the northern Gaza Strip
Pezeshkian: You want the countries of this region to turn on each other by handing out bombs and missiles, and then you say you are peace-seekers?
Pezeshkian: When they boast of having missiles and bombs beyond imagination, is it us who are causing war and bloodshed—or is it them, who flood this region with weapons and ammunition?
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian replying to Trump: Those who for the past year have killed more than 60,000 Palestinian women and children in bombings, cannot claim to be peace-seekers.

Poland demands $1.32 trl reparations from Germany for WWII damages

  • By Al Mayadeen English
  • Source: Agencies
  • 15 Sep 2022 14:16
4 Min Read

Warsaw votes to adopt reparations demand from Berlin for damages made by Nazi Germany, however, the research on which the total cost has been assessed is a PiS research which has been deemed as flawed by history experts.

  • x
  • Poland demands $1.32 trl reparations from Germany for WWII damages
    By a majority vote of 418 to 4, the reparations law was adopted by both the opposition and Poland's ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party.

The lower chamber of Poland's parliament voted on Wednesday to demand Germany pay $1.3 trillion in reparations for damages sustained during the Nazi era.

By a majority vote of 418 to 4, the reparations law was adopted by both the opposition and Poland's ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party.

However, researchers claim that some of the atrocities mentioned by Warsaw were really perpetrated by Poles, making the demand contentious.

Since PiS came to office in 2015, the party has demanded reparations from Germany. A 2019 estimate indicated the apparent cost of the Nazi occupation at $850 billion, but research commissioned by the party and released earlier this month increased the figure to 6.2 trillion zlotys ($1.32 trillion).

When the study was released, PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynsk said that the estimate was "conservative" and that Germany could pay it. Berlin paying up would promote "true Polish-German reconciliation," he added.

Germany has contended that Poland relinquished its right to reparations in agreements signed with East Germany in 1953 by its communist government and in agreements reached with the USSR, US, UK, and France in 1990 by East and West Germany. Poland responded by claiming that the 1953 pact was made under Soviet pressure and that it was not a party to the 1990 negotiations.

In a direct critique of the reparations research by the PiS, Jan Grabowski, a Polish-born professor and Holocaust researcher at the University of Ottawa, told the Times of Israel last week that “It is a purely political document with no historical value.”

Related News

EU to impose higher tariffs on Ukrainian agricultural goods in June

Poland open for talks on French nuclear shield treaty

Additionally, Grabowski stated that it is “quite appalling” to blame these pogroms and atrocities solely on the Germans.

The divide between EU and Germany

Former Polish President Lech Walesa considered on June 4th that the European Union should dissolve and reestablish a new equivalent institution without Hungary and Poland, instead of compromising on key initiatives.

"If the European Commission greenlights Poland's post-Covid National Recovery Plan [KPO], that will be its defeat. The EU, instead of compromising with Poland, should dissolve and create a new community the next moment involving Germany and France, but excluding Poland and Hungary," Walesa told the Polish media outlet Interia.

Furthermore, Poland's refusal to supply oil to a refinery site in Schwedt, a town in Germany, has once again shown that Warsaw only pursues its own interests and that "oaths of European solidarity" are forgotten, remarked Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova to Radio Sputnik on August 24. 

The Financial Times on August 21 reported that Poland refused to supply oil to the German refinery, intending to compensate for Russian oil imports through the Druzhba pipeline, due to the fact that the plant's owner was Rosneft, a Russian energy company. 

"This is another argument in a piggy bank [of evidences] that Warsaw does not intend to play any game, even according to its own rules that were declared. Warsaw has interests that have nothing to do with mutual respect, mutually beneficial partnership with Ukraine," Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

The spokeswoman argued that Warsaw is driven by the desire to play the geopolitical card now, while completely forgetting all European promises and oaths of European solidarity."

Poland disregards the needs and interests of its European neighbors and partners in the EU, and would rather take advantage of the situation, notably as Warsaw has been demanding the complete reduction of Russian presence in German oil refineries since the start of the war in Ukraine.

Read more: US Vice President, Polish PM talk Ukraine, NATO Eastern flank: WH

  • Poland
  • Nazi Germany
  • Jan Grabowski
  • Germany
  • Holocaust

Most Read

Trump cut off contact with Netanyahu, senior Israeli official says

Trump cut off contact with Netanyahu: Israeli media

  • US & Canada
  • 9 May 2025
A boy draped in a Palestinian flag carries a mock rocket during a weekly anti-US and anti-Israeli rally in Sanaa, Yemen, Friday, May 9, 2025 (AP)

Yemen announces hypersonic missile strike on Ben Gurion Airport

  • Politics
  • 9 May 2025
President Donald Trump, left, greets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, Monday, April 7, 2025, in Washington (AP)

US pressures 'Israel' for Gaza deal; Witkoff's Israeli rebuke leaked

  • US & Canada
  • 9 May 2025
Palestinians pray over bodies of people killed in the Israeli bombardment who were brought from the Shifa hospital before burying them in a mass grave in the town of Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. (AP )

Gaza casualty figures mask a much bigger horror, new study shows

  • Politics
  • 11 May 2025

Coverage

All
Gaza prevails against genocide

Read Next

All
A Fly Dubai plane is parked on the tarmac at Ben Gurion International Airport in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Sunday, Nov. 10, 2024 (AP)
Economy

Israeli tourism suffers $3bln loss amid 'unprecedented' crisis

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during an annual ceremony in al-Quds, Occupied Palestine, April 29, 2025 (AP)
Politics

Netanyahu refuses to budge, captive talks stall: Israeli officials

Susan Sarandon joins hundreds urging BBC to release delayed Gaza film
Europe

Susan Sarandon joins call for BBC to air documentary on Gaza medics

In this photo released by the Saudi Royal Palace, Syria's interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, left, shakes hands with President Donald Trump, centre, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Wednesday, May 14, 2025 (AP)
Politics

'Israel' blindsided by Trumps' Syria sanctions lift: The Times

Al Mayadeen English

Al Mayadeen is an Arab Independent Media Satellite Channel.

All Rights Reserved

  • x
  • Privacy Policy
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Authors
Android
iOS