A German foreign ministry spokesperson said in late September that no funds had been reserved because no decisions had yet been taken on compensation.
That means survivors of concentration camps, ghettos and death marches, former forced labourers and wartime insurgents still alive in Poland will get “no compensation, no one-off payment and no monthly pension” from Berlin, the newspaper wrote.
It put their number at roughly 30,000 to 50,000, mostly people over 90 who often live alone and are in poor health. Fewer remain each week, it said.
Warsaw and Berlin have discussed the issue for years. Die Welt said the lack of any decision despite ministry-level debate is met in Poland “with sadness and anger”.
The paper argued that Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government has made action easier for Germany by speaking of redress for victims rather than reparations, as its predecessors did. Compensating the survivors would cost several hundred million euros, it said, a fraction of the more than EUR 1.3 trillion in reparations calculated by the previous Law and Justice (PiS) government.
Die Welt also cited rumours that German foreign ministry officials want Poland to promise no further claims, or at least ensure Berlin gets good press for any payout. If true, that would be “very indecent”, it said.
It said Chancellor Friedrich Merz could still add a line for victims to the draft budget, with the foreign and finance ministries’ agreement. The gesture would be “belated, but significant and morally right”.
Failing that, German civil society could step in with a fundraising drive or a special fund, the paper said, and German firms that used forced labour during the war, or companies that grew out of them, could contribute.
“This is the last chance”, it concluded.
(jh)
Source: PAP