British MP of Polish descent urges Germany to pay Poland war damages
Daniel Kawczynski, a member of Britain's House of Commons, on Monday sent an open letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, calling on her government to pay war reparations to Poland.
Writing "as a British Member of Parliament and on behalf of many of the Anglo-Polish community", Kawczynski urged the German government to "drop its opposition to the payment of reparations to Poland for the immense death and destruction during World War II".
The Conservative party MP, a former adviser to ex-Prime Minister David Cameron and currently head of the Polish-British cross-party group, rejected the view that in 1953, Poland had waived its reparation claims, noting at the time the country "was not in sovereign control of its own territory and was coerced into doing so by foreign pressure from Moscow".
Another document which could be seen as a renunciation of war damages, from 1990, was "made by the occupying powers and East and West Germany at a time when Poland was preoccupied with beginning the transition from five decades of authoritarian communist rule toward democracy", the British MP pointed out.
Kawczynski outlined the damage done to Poland in WW2, with
six million people having lost their lives, including 200,000 citiziens during the Warsaw Uprising (see: NOTE), and the subsequent installment of a Soviet-controlled communist government that lasted 44 years.
The British MP added "during this long period, Poles were denied not only their political freedom but also the opportunity to participate in the economic reconstruction of Europe under the Marshall Plan".
Noting the Polish Sejm (lower house) had recently "calculated the economic cost of the death and destruction inflicted by the war to be about USD 1
trillion", the British MP assessed, however, that "the human and political cost of the years of dictatorship and subjugation is incalculable", and that, in fact, "Poland's demand for reparations is far smaller than the total sum that the country and its people were forced to endure for fifty long years between 1939 and 1989".
"Chancellor Merkel - Kawczynski went on - the shadow of World War II and the decades of subjugation to foreign control runs deep".
Citing the German government's ongoing policy of compensating Jewish WW2 victims, under the Luxembourg Treaty (with Israel) of 1952, Kawczynski pointed out that about half of the six million who died in Poland were of Jewish descent, calling on Chancellor Merkel "to accept that Germany has a moral obligation to pay reparations for the World War II destruction of Poland".
"Germany's relations with Poland - and with the rest of Europe - cannot be based on grave historical injustices and a stubborn refusal to redress the wrongs of the past", the British MP wrote, urging the German Chancellor "to translate words into action to demonstrate that Germany is committed to equitable relations with its neighbours based on mutual respect and understanding".
"Anything less will be a travesty for the final few war veterans whose entire lives were defined by the horrors unleashed by Adolf Hitler", Kawczynski concluded.
The British MP's letter to Merkel was also sent to German Foreign Minister Siegmar Gabriel and the country's ambassador to Britain, Peter Ammon.
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NOTE 1: The Home Army-organised (see: NOTE 2) Warsaw Uprising broke out on August 1, 1944, as the biggest resistance operation in German-occupied Europe. Initially intended to last several days, it continued for over two months before its suppression by the Germans. The uprising claimed the lives of 18,000 insurgents and around 200,000 civilians.
After the insurgents surrendered and the remaining 500,000 residents were expelled, the Germans methodically burned down and blew up Warsaw house by house. By January 1945, app. 90 percent of the buildings and city infrastructure was destroyed.
NOTE 2: The Home Army (AK) was the main resistance movement in Poland when it was occupied by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II. It was formed from the Union of Armed Struggle (ZWZ) (see: NOTE 3), which in turn evolved from a clandestine organisation called the Polish Victory Service (SZP).
The SZP was launched on the night of Sept. 26, 1939, by a group of senior officers led by Gen. Michal Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski, with the participation of Warsaw Mayor Stefan Starzynski. It became the nucleus of a nationwide resistance movement known as the Polish Underground State.
The Home Army, whose allegiance was to the Polish government-in-exile, was one of the largest and best organised resistance movements in Europe, with the total number of fighters put at anywhere from 200,000 to 600,000.
In his book God's Playground. A History of Poland, prominent historian Norman Davies said that, "the Home Army could fairly claim to be the largest of European resistance [organisations]".
The so-called Polish Underground State, which operated from 1939 to 1945 and by many was looked up to as a model of conspiracy administration, was subordinated to the Polish government-in-exile to have been first based in France and subsequently in Great Britain. In Poland, the government-in-exile had an impressively developed administration with secret courts and prosecutors, underground schools, universities as well as publishing houses.
The Home Army was the armed wing of the Polish Underground State. Along with various combat activities, the AK was also widely involved in rescuing Jews, among others, by means of the famous 1942-founded Council to Aid Jews (Rada Pomocy Zydom) codenamed 'Zegota' - the only organisation in Europe and a unique one on a global scale established to defend and provide help to Jews in ghettos and elsewhere.
The successive commanders of the AK were generals Stefan Rowecki (until June 30, 1943) Tadeusz Komorowski (until Oct. 2, 1944) and Leopold Okulicki (until Jan. 19, 1945).
The culmination of the AK's armed struggle came with the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. The AK's wartime losses totalled about 100,000 soldiers killed in fighting or murdered, and about 50,000 taken to the Soviet Union and imprisoned.
In early 1942, the Home Army had about 100,000 soldiers; by the summer of 1944 the number had risen to 380,000. These included 10,800 officers. Poland’s famous Silent Unseen elite special-operations paratroops were also part of the Home Army.
The Home Army's activities did not end with the end of WW II. After 1945 the AK's so-called Enduring Soldiers fought the Soviet regime.
Under communism, AK soldiers were persecuted by Poland's authorities, especially during the Stalinist period. Many of them were handed death penalties; others spent many years in prison.
NOTE 3: The Union of Armed Struggle (ZWZ) was an underground force formed in Poland following the invasion of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union in September 1939. On February 14, 1942, it transformed into the Home Army (AK). (PAP)
