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Politicians from Greece and Poland have sent warnings to Berlin to expect demands for billions more euros to make amends for Nazi atrocities. Polish president Andrzej Duda argues his country was never compensated sufficiently after German forces razed Warsaw to rubble during World War 2. Mr Duda told Germany’s largest Sunday newspaper Bild am Sonntag: “Reparations are not a closed subject. “A group of experts is dealing with this in the Polish parliament. MPs will debate it and decide on the next steps.

“Warsaw was levelled to the ground. The experts’ initial results show that we were never compensated for this.” Greece is also working on its own plans to demand payback for damages caused during its Nazi-era occupation of the country. Costas Douzinas, an MP from the ruling Syriza party said Athens had previously held off on the subject because of its huge financial bailout loans from the EU and Berlin but is now ready to pursue reparations. “This is an issue that psychologically still rankles, and as a government we are absolutely determined to raise it,” he told the Guardian.

Greece and Poland demand Germany pay up €1trillion in World War 2 reparations

“Obviously Greece couldn’t do that when it was in a programme receiving loans from the EU and Berlin. It would have been totally contradictory.” Stelios Koulouglou, a Syriza MEP, said: “Germany has never properly assumed its historical responsibility for the wholesale destruction of the country.” Nazi Germany’s occupation of Greece “played a major part in delaying our country’s development as a modern European state,” he added. Germany’s new bill for reparations could set Berlin back as much as €1 trillion in combined demands from Warsaw and Athens.

A Greek report by a group of cross-party MPs said Germany owes Athens some €299 billion for the damages caused during the Nazi-occupation. In March, a similar report from Warsaw said it could demand as much as €740 billion as compensation for destroyed property and loss of life during World War 2. Nazi Germany, together with the Soviet Union, attacked and occupied Poland in 1939. Adolf Hitler's Nazis were responsible for the death of most of the 3.2 million Jews that lived in Poland.