Poland to seek over $1tn war reparations from Germany for WWII

Warsaw, Sep 2 (IANS) Poland's ruling party leader said that his country would seek 6.2 trillion zloty ($1.31 trillion) in compensation from Germany for the destruction caused by the Nazis during the Second World War.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the Law and Justice party, made the claim at a ceremony presenting a report over Poland's losses from the German invasion, reports Xinhua news agency.

Kaczynski said that although the reparations process would be "lengthy and difficult", the issue was to "gain damages for everything that Germany, that the German state, that the German nation, did in Poland in the years 1939-1945".

He added that "dozens of countries around the world ... have received damages from Germany while Poland has not", which he attributed to a lack of initiative.

Kaczynski said a general principle applied in international relations whereby if one state does another great harm, it must make good for that harm.

"And there is no reason why Poland has been excluded from the action of that principle," he said.

Around 6 million Poles, including 3 million Jews, were killed during the Second World War, and the capital Warsaw was levelled following a 1944 uprising in which about 200,000 civilians died.

Nazi Germany also controlled the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp in occupied Poland where 960,000 Jews (865,000 of whom were gassed on arrival), 74,000 ethnic Poles, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and up to 15,000 other Europeans were killed.