Majority of Poles support country’s claim to reparations for occupation by Nazi Germany

Almost two-thirds of Poles support the country’s claimed entitlement to reparations for damages suffered as a result of German occupation during World War II.

According to a survey carried out by the Social Changes polling agency for the wPolityce.pl news outlet, 64 percent of respondents backed the move with just 16 percent opposed and 20 percent undecided.

The poll comes in the aftermath of recent remarks made by the leader of Poland’s governing party, Jarosław Kaczyński, who told a rally in central Poland over the weekend that Poland would not give up on its right to claim war reparations from Germany. He emphasized that Germany still has a material as well as moral debt it must pay to Poland. 

Kaczyński signaled that a detailed report setting out the exact amounts of reparations to be sought was nearing completion, adding that it would contain detailed photographic evidence and an index of locations in which damages occurred. 

According to the ruling party’s parliamentary deputy, Arkadiusz Mularczyk, who chairs the parliamentary group for estimating the reparations claim from Germany, the report should be ready for publication in the coming months.

Germany disputes that it owes Poland any reparations, arguing that in the early 1950s the Polish government waived its claim to any reparations against the then Soviet-controlled German Democratic Republic (East Germany).