Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki attends a commemoration event at the former Nazi German concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz II-Birkenau, during the ceremonies marking the 74th anniversary of the liberation of the camp and International Holocaust Victims Remembrance Day. (photo credit: REUTERS)
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Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said during a debate held on Sunday in the city of Lodz that “if Poland will ever be in a situation in which it pays compensation sums for World War II, it would be as if Hitler had won,” Channel 13 reported.
The Polish Prime Minister also vowed that as long as his Law and Justice [PiS] party is in power “such a thing will never happen.”
Poland recently cancelled a planned meeting with Israeli government representatives when the Israelis announced the discussion will include the question of compensation given to Jewish-Polish citizens who lost their assets during and after the Holocaust.
Morawiecki’s comments may have meant that by paying compensation sums to Jewish victims of the Holocaust, Poland will seem to be taking responsibility for the crimes committed by the Nazis against its Jewish citizens. As Poland was occupied by Nazi Germany, the Polish view is largely that they were the victims and it is Nazi Germany that must bear responsibility for the Holocaust.
Not only Jewish assets were nationalized by the Polish state following the war, assets once held by German speaking Poles, Ukrainian-speaking Poles and Polish people who attempted to resist the inclusion of the country in the Socialist bloc were also nationalized. Therefore, the question of compensation is a very complex one. Parts of Poland were annexed to the recently established countries of Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania – making many Poles refugees once the borders were shifted following the 1945 Yalta Conference.
Poland recently witnessed street demonstrations under the banner “This is Polska [Poland] and not Polin [the Hebrew name for the country]” after various Polish media outlets expressed fear that Israel and world Jewish organizations had set out to retrieve Jewish prosperity in Poland.
The prime minister’s comments and protests were likely sparked by the American Act 447, the JUST Act, which requires the US government to report on property lost by Jews in Europe due to the Holocaust.
Many Poles view the focus on Jewish property lost during the Holocaust – as opposed to Polish property lost in what is modern Ukraine Belarus and Lithuania – as another example of how Jewish suffering is being treated differently than their own.
On Friday, Former Polish Foreign Affairs Minister Anna Fotyga was presenting her party’s views during a television debate when Konrad Berkowicz [Korwin] approached her from behind and placed a Jewish skullcap above her head as she was speaking, claiming she and her party are “kneeling in front of the Jews.”
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