Speaking at a meeting with young Poles and Germans in Warsaw, Heiko Maas said he was ashamed of what Germans did to Poland during the war, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.
"I would like to ask the families of those who were killed and wounded, I would like to ask the Polish people, for forgiveness,” Maas said, as quoted by Poland's PAP news agency, during the event at the Warsaw Uprising Museum, which documents the story of the city’s bloody 1944 revolt against its German occupiers.
“I am ashamed of what Germans acting in the name of Germany did to Poland," Maas added, as cited by PAP.
Earlier in the day, he and Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz jointly honoured thousands of people killed by the Nazi Germans during a massacre in the Polish capital’s western Wola district in the early days of the Warsaw Uprising.
Maas was in Warsaw on a two-day visit for talks with Polish officials and to take part in events to mark the 75th anniversary of the start of the 1944 insurgency, which lasted 63 days and left the city razed to the ground.
The Warsaw Uprising was the largest military operation by any resistance movement in Europe against the continent's Nazi German occupiers during World War II.
The heroic act of resistance resulted in the death of some 18,000 Polish fighters and up to 200,000 civilians, according to some estimates.
Nearly 6 million Polish citizens were killed throughout World War II, which broke out when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939.
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Source: IAR, PAP