WARSAW — Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has stepped up its anti-German rhetoric by declaring Warsaw has a right to billions of dollars in reparations for destruction inflicted by the Nazis in World War II.

Despite doubts about the claim expressed by parts of the government — including the foreign ministry and President Andrzej Duda — PiS is waging an anti-German campaign via friendly media. Right-wing TV channel Republika's website published an image of the slogan "Reparationen machen frei" photoshopped to look like the gate to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where the original inscription read "Arbeit macht frei."

The campaign's inspiration comes from the top: Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of Law and Justice and the most powerful politician in the country, told a party conference in July: “Poland never renounced reparations for World War II. Those who think so are wrong.”

Top government officials followed through in early August, with Deputy Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz supporting the claim. Campaigners' estimates of how much Germany "owes" Poland vary wildly, with the right-wing weekly Sieci Prawdy demanding $6 trillion in reparations on its cover.

Berlin noticed the revival of the reparations debate and curtly rejected the claim. In a brief statement, a German government spokeswoman said the issue was “dealt with conclusively in the past.”

The Polish government has made a practice of looking for foes since coming to power in late 2015 — and those efforts have helped consolidate the one-third of the electorate that strongly backs the ruling party. Top government officials have demonized asylum seekers, attacked Brussels over its accusations that Poland is backsliding on democratic principles and accused opposition parties of betraying the country to foreigners.

The shift to hostility against Germany is the latest gambit for Kaczyński, who has long been suspicious of Poland's powerful neighbor. PiS accuses Berlin of abusing its influence in Brussels to sway the ongoing debate about Poland's infringement of EU rule of law standards, and Kaczyński is gearing up for an attack on German-owned media operations in Poland.

The last time the reparations debate flared up was in 2015, when former German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier — now the country's head of state — said the issue had already been “legally and politically resolved.”

Reparations, however, are an emotional issue in Poland and talk of the country's right to claim money from Germany is unlikely to disappear any time soon. A recent opinion poll found 63 percent of Poles backed the idea.

'Good neighbors'

During the German wartime occupation, Poland lost a fifth of its population; many towns and cities, including Warsaw, were reduced to rubble. At the postwar Potsdam conference in 1945, the victorious Allies agreed that the Soviet Union would get reparations, and that part of that should be paid to Poland; it's unlikely Moscow ever did that. In 1953, the Soviet Union decided to forsake any reparations that might impoverish its East German satellite, and communist-ruled Poland followed suit.

Upon German reunification in 1990, which resulted in a German-Polish "good neighborhood" treaty one year later, there was a nod to wartime compensation in the form of a 500 million Deutsche mark payment to a foundation in Warsaw and about 2 billion marks paid to Polish victims of Nazi forced labor programs.

The reparation camp's argument is that Poland never really relinquished its claim to German compensation. The communist regime that agreed to forsake reparations in 1953 “was a Soviet colony,” Macierewicz told Polish state television.

But Poland’s former ambassador to Germany, Andrzej Byrt, says it was a sovereign Polish decision not to raise the reparations issue further in the 1990 Polish-German treaty negotiations, when Warsaw's priority was to guarantee the country's post-war borders with Germany.

“Poland was a sovereign country then and it decided not to raise the matter,” Byrt told the Onet portal. “Any attempt to open the issue today will harm not only our good relations with Germany but also political interests of the four powers which won the war and which gave up, in a sovereign manner, on German reparations in 1953.”

In 2004, just after joining the EU, the Polish government confirmed it wouldn't seek reparations.

'Binding, unilateral act'

Germany is now a crucial economic partner for Poland, buying a quarter of all Polish exports, and was a key advocate of Poland’s accession to the European Union. Poland's influence in the EU grew with Germany's support and Chancellor Angela Merkel was a crucial supporter of former Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk's candidacy for the presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2014.

The compensation issue is opening fissures within the government and within Law and Justice.

Although the bulk of the party strongly supports Kaczyński, Duda — already at odds with PiS for his recent veto of two bills giving the government more power over the judiciary — has been more circumspect.

“It cannot be decided in a public debate and we must find strong legal grounds for it,” said Krzysztof Szczerski, the president's cabinet chief.

The president deferred to the foreign ministry, which gave its position last week. Deputy Minister Marek Magierowski said Poland stood by the decision taken by the communist government in 1953.

“No matter how we consider the matter today, the Polish legal doctrine is inclined to a position that the statement of 1953 is a binding, unilateral act of the state of Poland,” he said.

Within a day, the ministry backtracked, saying Magierowski was simply describing the current state of affairs. "The possibility of seeking reparations claims needs further analysis," it said in a statement, adding that the ministry, "along with other Polish government institutions, is studying the problem in question."