Germany will refuse all demands for war reparations, a government spokesman said Saturday as a resolution passed by Polish deputies demanding compensation for damage suffered by Poles in World War II threatened to cast a chill in bilateral relations.
"Germany rejects all demands concerning compensation, the matter being closed since the chancellor's speech" of August 1, a foreign ministry spokesman said, referring to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's speech in Warsaw during a commemorative visit in which he said that "history must not be rewritten or reinterpreted." On Friday the Polish parliament voted unanimously, with one abstention, for a resolution calling on Germany to pay for World War II damages.
The move was seen as a tit-for-tat response to a series of claims seeking reparations for ethnic Germans expelled from Polish territory at the end of the war. A German government spokesman noted that Schroeder had also ruled out any possible claims for restitution of property seized from the expelled Germans.
A leading German politician meanwhile warned that the Polish move could harm German-Polish relations.
The demand for reparations "cast doubt on the trust between our two peoples," the deputy leader of the parliamentary group of the ruling Social Democrats, Angelika Schwall-Dueren, said. The Berlin daily Berliner Zeitung commented that "he who presents a negative image of his neighbour feels stronger."