Karl Heinz Roth and Hartmut Ruebner, the authors of a book on reparations for Poland and Greece, have concluded that Poland is entitled to demand compensation for the destruction it suffered at the hands of Germany during World War II, the dw.com news website has reported.

Murders, exploitation, destruction

Roth and Ruebner have estimated the losses caused by German wartime crimes in Poland—including murders, exploitation and destruction—at EUR 1.18 trillion, according to dw.com.

Writing in Tuesday’s edition of Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung daily, German historian Stephan Lehnstaedt said that Berlin has handed out only "crumbs" to the victims of Nazi aggression, and only "after persistent resistance and bureaucratic-legal tricks."

There are around 40,000 victims of German crimes still alive in Poland, Lehnstaedt said, as cited by dw.com.

The idea of Poland seeking war reparations from Germany was floated by Poland’s conservative Law and Justice party after it came to power in 2015.

Party leader Jarosław Kaczyński said in May that over EUR 1 trillion in war reparations could be owed to his country by Germany.

But German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas was earlier this year quoted as saying that, for his country, the issue of reparations was “closed from the legal point of view.”

The head of a Polish team assessing potential reparations said last year that Germany could owe Poland USD 850 billion for damage it inflicted in World War II.

‘Destroyed cities, lost demographic potential’

"We are talking about very large, but justified amounts of compensation for war crimes, for destroyed cities, villages, the lost demographic potential of our country,” conservative MP Arkadiusz Mularczyk was quoted as saying at the time.

An analysis by Polish parliamentary experts found in 2017 that the government in Warsaw was entitled to demand reparations from Germany.

German officials have said that the issue was definitively settled with Poland in 1953.

In a resolution adopted that year, the Polish communist government of the time recognised that Germany had fulfilled its obligations with regard to Poland and decided against seeking compensation.

But Poland's ruling conservatives have said that decisions made by the country's communist-era authorities are not valid because they were made under pressure from the Soviet Union.

(pk/gs)

Source: dw.com