After loud demands for reparations and sharp tones from the national conservative government, Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock appealed to Poland to maintain the partnership. The reunification was “inconceivable without the courageous Poles who resolutely went on strike, argued and demonstrated for freedom and real democratic co-determination,” explained the Green politician before she left for a visit to the Polish capital, Warsaw.
October 3rd commemorates German reunification in 1990, almost a year after the peaceful revolution in the GDR in autumn 1989.
Shortly before Baerbock’s visit, Poland’s PiS government had reinforced its demands for reparations from Germany: Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau signed a corresponding diplomatic note that is to be handed over to Berlin. PiS boss Jaroslaw Kaczynski also reproached the federal government on Sunday for striving for “German supremacy” in the EU.
Baerbock: No end to the workup
“As partners in a common Europe, we have the opportunity to shape our future for the benefit of our children,” explained Baerbock. “But we also have a responsibility to maintain the trust that we have built together over the past thirty years.” The minister emphasized: “This includes coming to terms with and remembering the immeasurable suffering that Germany has brought on the people of Poland, which is why important tasks remain for our generations and for the generations to come – there cannot and will not be a final stroke here.”
Baerbock acknowledged that Poland was “proceeding with courage and enormous solidarity in supporting Ukraine”. Together they oppose Russia’s war of aggression and attempts by Russian President Vladimir Putin to illegally move borders. In Warsaw she wants to talk to her counterpart Rau about ideas for increasing aid to Ukraine. “Because we know: Europe is strong these days because it sticks together.”
Baerbock wants to give a speech at the celebrations of the German embassy in the evening. On Tuesday morning she meets Rau at the State Department. The minister will then take part in parts of the program of the Warsaw Security Forum. Among other things, Baerbock wants to take part in a discussion on the situation in Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine and its consequences.
Warsaw wants “final legal and substantive settlement”
In her departure statement, the minister did not mention the diplomatic note signed by Rau immediately before Baerbock’s visit on his country’s demands for reparations from Germany. Rau said the note “expresses the Polish Foreign Minister’s conviction that the parties should take immediate steps towards a lasting, comprehensive and final legal and material settlement of the consequences of German aggression and occupation in 1939-1945.”
On the 83rd anniversary of the start of the Second World War on September 1st, a parliamentary commission in Warsaw presented a report in which the damage caused by World War II in Poland was estimated at more than 1.3 trillion euros.
Poland’s foreign minister did not name a specific amount. However, Rau made it clear that according to Warsaw, a regulation must include “the payment of compensation by Germany for the material and immaterial damage that the Polish state suffered as a result of this aggression and occupation”. Victims of the German occupiers and their family members would also have to be compensated. A regulation must also be found for the stolen cultural assets and archives.
The federal government rejects the demand for reparations. In doing so, she refers to the Two Plus Four Agreement of 1990 on the foreign policy consequences of German unity.
