Government spokesman Adam Szłapka was asked in an interview with private broadcaster Polsat News about the article in the Financial Times, which said Poland was preparing a reparations request against Russia for “atrocities committed during Soviet domination in the country”, mirroring its demand for EUR 1.3 trillion in compensation from Germany for World War Two crimes.
“For now the Institute for War Losses is dealing with this above all,” Szłapka said. “It is working on data, on scholarly research, and once it has examined everything in detail, decisions can be taken.”
The newspaper cited Bartosz Gondek, director of the institute, which Prime Minister Donald Tusk has tasked with investigating historical Russian crimes. Gondek said “the investigation will be much broader than the work on Nazi atrocities, given that during the Cold War Poland remained under Soviet influence for more than four decades”.
According to the Financial Times, Polish historians lack access to highly sensitive Russian archives and many key documents were falsified or destroyed in Soviet times. The work is being carried out by a team of about 10 Polish historians and researchers, the paper reported.
Szłapka said the current work is meant to be less politicized than in the past, recalling that the Institute for War Losses was created under the previous Law and Justice (PiS) government and “was extremely politicized”.
He said the aim now was “to carry out a very reliable and thorough academic query of all the losses” suffered after the Soviet attack on Poland in 1939, the occupation of those territories and later events, so they could be examined comprehensively.
Szłapka also confirmed the difficulties described by the Financial Times regarding access to archives.
“We know this is not simple, because these archives are often very inaccessible,” he said, adding that any political move could come only after the institute’s research is complete.
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Source: Polsat News