The 2022 zeitgeist is that when people demand “equity,” what they really want is your home equity. Whether BLM or Poland’s right wing populist government, they are all responding to the increasingly antiquarian Spirit of the Age: whether 1619 or 1939, the past demands expensive rectification.
From the Associated Press:
Poland demands US$1.3 trillion war reparations from Germany
Monika Scislowska
The Associated PressPublished Sept. 1, 2022 4:01 a.m. PDT
WARSAW, POLAND – Poland’s top politician said Thursday that the government will seek equivalent of some US$1.3 trillion in reparations from Germany for the Nazis’ Second World War invasion and occupation of his country.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the Law and Justice party, announced the huge claim at the release of a long-awaited report on the cost to the country of years of Nazi German occupation as it marks 83 years since the start of Second World War.
Kaczynski and his identical twin brother were the child actor stars in a classic 1962 children’s movie. Although children are fascinated by identical twins, adults tend to find them creepy, so the two Kaczynskis tried not to be photographed together. The other Kaczynski died in a 2011 plane crash on the way to commemorate the Soviet massacre of the Polish officer corps at Katyn that, like Katyn, wiped out much of the Polish leadership. The surviving Kaczynski blames Putin for causing the crash.
I’m not exactly sure what that old history has to do with this new history, but it probably has something. In any case, it’s awfully iStevey.
… “We will turn to Germany to open negotiations on the reparations,” Kaczynski said, adding it will be a “long and not an easy path” but “one day will bring success.”
He insisted the move would serve “true Polish-German reconciliation” that would be based on “truth.”
He claimed the German economy is capable of paying the bill.
Germany argues compensation was paid to East Bloc nations in the years after the war while territories that Poland lost in the East as borders were redrawn were compensated with some of Germany’s pre-war lands. Berlin calls the matter closed.
Germany’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday the government’s position remains “unchanged” in that “the question of reparations is concluded.”
“Poland long ago, in 1953, waived further reparations and has repeatedly confirmed this waiver,” the ministry said in an emailed response to a Associated Press query about the new Polish report.
“This is a significant basis for today’s European order. Germany stands by its responsibility for World War II politically and morally.”
… Poland’s government rejects a 1953 declaration by the country’s then-communist leaders, under pressure from the Soviet Union, agreeing not to make any further claims on Germany.
An opposition lawmaker, Grzegorz Schetyna, says the report is just a “game in the internal politics” and insists Poland needs to build good relations with Berlin.
In a country where bullet holes from the war could still be seen on houses not so long ago, recent surveys have shown that Polish public opinion is roughly equally divided on the issue of reparations. Many families still keep alive memories of family members lost in the war.
Some 6 million of Poland’s citizens, including 3 million Jews, were killed in the war. Some of them were victims of the Soviet Red Army that invaded from the east.
High on my list of nightmare scenarios is that Germany demands back the westernmost 200 mile strip of Poland that Stalin gave the Poles in 1945 and ethnically cleansed all the Germans from.
My view is: Let’s let sleeping dogs lie.
After all, Poland is one of the world’s success stories over the last third of a century.
But that kind of thinking is less and less in tune with the times.
