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Poland asks UN to help secure WWII damages from Germany: deputy FM

03.01.2023 13:30
A Polish deputy foreign minister has said that the government in Warsaw will ask the United Nations for support in obtaining compensation from Germany for World War II.
Arkadiusz Mularczyk.
Arkadiusz Mularczyk.PAP/Marcin Obara

Arkadiusz Mularczyk made the announcement in an interview with public broadcaster Polish Radio on Tuesday. 

Asked about Poland’s push to secure more than PLN 6 trillion in compensation from Germany for World War II, Mularczyk said that "a number of steps have already been taken."

He told Polish Radio: “We have sent more than 50 formal diplomatic notes to the countries of the European Union, the Council of Europe and NATO, so the issue is known in our cultural sphere, in our civilisational sphere, among our allies.”

Mularczyk added that Poland had also applied to enlist the support of the Council of Europe, as well as asking the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to help regain cultural treasures plundered from the country during World War II.  

Mularczyk announced: “Today we’ll be making arguably the most important move yet, namely we’ll apply to the United Nations, asking for help in this matter.”  

He said: “I have asked for a meeting with the UN secretary-general, with the president of the UN General Assembly and with the UN high commissioner for human rights."

Mularczyk added that "Poland’s initiatives in the last three months have been designed to raise international awareness about the fact that there is a problem of war crimes for which nobody has been held to account.”   

He also said in the interview that Poland was seeking "to reach out with its message to the world’s most important international organisation,” as well as to politicians, diplomats and the entire international community, Polish state news agency PAP reported.

“We are pleading with them to get involved in this matter, to create a kind of platform for dialogue with Germany, which doesn’t want to engage in dialogue,” Mularczyk told Polish Radio.

(pm/gs)

Source: IAR, PAP, interia.pl