Steinbach wygrywa z Powiernictwem Polskim

Steinbach wygrywa z Powiernictwem Polskim
Nasz Dziennik, 2007-08-18
Sąd krajowy w Kolonii zakazał Powiernictwu Polskiemu (PP) rozpowszechniania plakatu, na którym Steinbach i BdV są jakoby porównywani do członków SS. Zdaniem członków PP, skandalem jest, że zakaz niemieckiego sądu dotyczy także terytorium Polski.

Koloński sąd w uzasadnieniu wyroku uznał, że polski plakat stanowi atak na dobra osobiste Eriki Steinbach i Związku Wypędzonych. Jeżeli członkowie PP nie zastosują się do decyzji niemieckiego sądu, to grozi im kara w wysokości do 250 tys. euro lub kara więzienia do 6 miesięcy.
- Jest to skandal! Nie ugnę się i podniosę tę rzuconą rękawicę. Powiernictwo nie pozwoli się zastraszyć i nie zaprzestanie swej działalności. Po pierwsze, nie do pomyślenia jest, że sąd niemiecki wyznacza, co my, Polacy, możemy, a czego nie możemy robić na terenie naszego kraju - gdyż sąd niemiecki zakazał dalszego kolportażu ulotki także w Polsce. Po drugie, nie pozwolimy na ciągłe fałszowanie historii. To wszystko na pewno nie wpłynie pozytywnie na stosunki polsko-niemieckie - zauważa szefowa PP, senator Dorota Arciszewska-Mielewczyk (PiS).
Pozew przeciw Powiernictwu Polskiemu złożyła Erika Steinbach i Związek Wypędzonych.


Waldemar Maszewski, Hamburg



Z prof. Piotrem Małoszewskim rozmawia Waldemar Maszewski

Panie Profesorze, jak Pan ocenia obecny stosunek niemieckich władz do poczynań Związku Wypędzonych (BdV)?
- Władze niemieckie być może niezbyt głośno, ale jednoznacznie popierają działalność Związku Wypędzonych. Świadczy o tym chociażby fakt, że otrzymują oni zawsze rządowe fundusze na swoją działalność.

Czy Erika Steinbach cieszy się poparciem wśród niemieckich polityków?
- Niektórzy politycy niemieccy twierdzą co prawda, że Erika Steinbach jest politykiem kontrowersyjnym i próbują się odcinać od jej działalności, ale za tymi słowami nie idą najmniejsze czyny. Steinbach w mojej ocenie posiada poparcie nie tylko w partii CDU/CSU, ale także wśród pozostałych polityków, szczególnie jeśli chodzi o budowę Centrum przeciwko Wypędzeniom i kwestię roszczeń majątkowych. Sama Steinbach jest politykiem cynicznym i zimnym. Jestem pewien, że zawsze będzie dążyć do tego, aby uzyskać odszkodowania za majątki pozostawione przez Niemców na byłych terenach niemieckich.

Jak Pan ocenia niemieckie roszczenia o odszkodowania i stosunek niemieckiego rządu do tego tematu?
- Berlin stwierdza, że nie będzie popierał prywatnych roszczeń, ale jednocześnie zastrzega, że nie może zabronić składania indywidualnych pozwów. Rząd polski musi prowadzić w tej materii taką politykę, jaką prowadził przez ostatnie dwa lata, czyli konsekwentnie dążyć do tego, aby wszelkie roszczenia majątkowe przejął rząd niemiecki. Bundestag powinien specjalną uchwałą ustalić, że wszelkie roszczenia przejmuje strona niemiecka, co zamknęłoby ten problem raz na zawsze.

Czy widzi Pan rzeczywistą wolę po stronie niemieckiej budowania dobrych relacji z Polską?
- Przez pryzmat działalności Konwentu Polskich Organizacji w Niemczech mogę stwierdzić, że obecnie strona niemiecka trochę inaczej rozmawia z nami - sympatyczniej. Lecz niestety za zmianą formy nie idą nawet najmniejsze posunięcia zmierzające do załatwienia jakiejkolwiek sprawy. Niemcy zmienili ton na bardziej przyjazny, częściej klepią nas po ramionach, ale z tego nic dla nas nie wynika.

Jaką postawę Pana zdaniem powinien przyjąć polski rząd wobec Niemiec?
- Rząd niemiecki - obojętnie czy rządzi prawica, czy lewica - konsekwentnie realizuje swoją politykę zagraniczną. Celem tej polityki jest dominacja w Europie i znalezienie silnej pozycji w świecie. W związku z tym tak długo jak Warszawa prowadziła uniżoną i poddańczą politykę zagraniczną wobec Niemiec - co odbywało się przez ostatnie szesnaście lat - tak długo Berlin pozytywnie mówił o naszych wzajemnych relacjach. Natomiast w momencie, gdy Polska znalazła się w Unii Europejskiej i rządy objął PiS, nastąpiła całkowita zmiana niemieckiego tonu. Powodem tego był fakt, że nasza polityka zagraniczna zaczęła być korzystna dla Polski i dbająca o nasze narodowe interesy. Nagle w Berlinie się okazało, że ten partner, który wydawał się już być ugłaskany i podporządkowany, zaczyna się upominać o swoje interesy. Z tego wypływa zmasowany atak zarówno polityki niemieckiej, jak i niemieckich mediów. Polska powinna utrzymywać taką politykę wobec Niemiec, jaką reprezentuje obecny rząd.

Dziękuję za rozmowę.


Prof. dr dab. Piotr Małoszewski mieszka w Monachium. Jest współzałożycielem i wiceprzewodniczącym Chrześcijańskiego Centrum Krzewienia Kultury. Jest także członkiem Konwentu Polskich Organizacji w Niemczech. W tym roku Ojciec Święty Benedykt XVI przyznał prof. Małoszewskiemu Kawalerski Order św. Sylwestra Papieża.
Arrogant Erika
25 September 2003

Those expecting Erika Steinbach's visit to Warsaw to be a breakthrough in the discussion concerning a center commemorating the suffering of the Germans in the wake of World War II were disappointed.

The chair of the German Union of the Expelled (BdV), though smiling to her Polish interlocutors, seemed not to hear what they were saying, and left their questions and proposals unanswered. To the consternation of many Poles, she addressed them with the words "We forgive."

Steinbach flew to Warsaw Sept. 16 at the invitation of Rzeczpospolita. In the daily's headquarters, a debate was held with the participation of representatives of the Polish media, institutions dealing with international issues, and major political parties. The televised discussion, focusing on the idea-promoted by Steinbach for several months-of establishing a Center for the Expelled in Berlin, lasted over three hours. However, even in the opinion of the organizers, the meeting did not bring the expected results. Steinbach endeavored to convince her opponents that the idea of establishing a German war-time martyrdom center was not directed against Poland; on the contrary, its intention was to commemorate the suffering of all innocent victims. She remained unconvincing, however, failing to respond to numerous counter-arguments given by the Poles.

"Steinbach did not understand the Polish arguments and did not win support for her project to build a Center for the Expelled. To specific questions, she would not give any answer. Nor did she respond to proposals to suspend, for the sake of Polish-German relations, the project's implementation in Berlin," wrote Rzeczpospolita the day after the debate, in its commentary "Center Against Reconciliation." The daily, in the pages of which debate among political commentators has raged for many weeks, had earlier published Steinbach's articles on the subject.

Frightened by reactions
Participants on the German side, in addition to Steinbach, included political commentator Helga Hirsch, who supported the idea of building the Center in Berlin, and Bundestag deputies Dietmar Nietan of the SPD and Jerzy Montag of the Green Party, who opposed the idea . On the Polish side, those invited to the debate included: Chair of the Sejm European Committee Józef Oleksy of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD); Sejm Deputy Speaker Donald Tusk of the Civic Platform (PO); Marcin Libicki of Law and Justice (PiS), a Polish observer in the European Parliament; and Anna Wolff-Powęska, director of the Western Institute in Poznań. The debate was led by Maciej Łukasiewicz-editor-in-chief of Rzeczpospolita. An audience of over 100, including political commentators, diplomats, historians and journalists from several countries, took an active role.

At the beginning, Steinbach said that she had decided to come to Warsaw because she was "frightened by Polish responses... I would not like Poles to think that we want to change history. Quite the contrary, without Hitler there would have been no expelled," she said.

During the discussion, however, it turned out that while the German representation were divided in their views, the Polish side presented a generally unanimous position against the center as proposed by the BdV.

Prime Minister Leszek Miller voiced an opinion commonly shared by Polish political forces. Earlier, during a Sejm debate on the subject, Miller said that the government would not consent to the Germans falsifying history. "Poland will not agree to the idea of the center for the displaced being used to demonstrate the harm suffered by only one nation, all the more so since that nation caused the outbreak of the World War II," Miller said, adding that Warsaw supported the idea of the German authorities to establish a center for the displaced that would be of a pan-European character.

Repeating the stance of his party chief, Oleksy reproached Steinbach. "Sharing responsibility for the war is out of the question, and please remember that at the Holocaust monument in Berlin the names of the perpetrators are not there, but such a list is to be present at the Center for the Expelled," he said.

In the opinion of Janusz Reiter, former Polish ambassador to Germany, the Center for the Expelled could harm reconciliation between Poland and Germany. "You ought not, however, force the German party to withdraw," said Reiter, explaining that "the sentiments existing in Germany, if muzzled, would have to explode one day; as a result, we would pay a high price." Reiter said he believed in the possibility of tackling the subject without sentencing both nations to antagonism, which that day, he observed, seemed unavoidable.

Prof. Jerzy Holzer, a historian, said that those to blame for the suffering of the Germans were the Germans themselves. He said that the millions of Germans who perished during the war was a result of actions taken by the then government of Germany. "And now, you want to build a particular monument to the wrongs suffered by the Germans, but actually you will build, if you please-a monument to The Fate Prepared by the Germans for the Germans," Holzer said.

A discord that hurts
Participants in the meeting wanted to know if, for the sake of Polish-German reconciliation, Steinbach would at least suspend plans for the center. "Suspending the project of the Center for the Expelled would prove good will. I have not even the slightest doubt that you will not find acceptance for the center in Poland," Tusk said.

But Steinbach did not answer; nor did she correct any of the statements, including those by journalists, questioning her right to refer to herself as one of the "expelled" (Steinbach was born in Rumia near Gdynia as a daughter of a German soldier participating in the occupation of Poland). However, in her statement ending the debate, referring to the letter of 1966 from Polish bishops to German bishops, Steinbach, on behalf of the Germans displaced after WW II, addressed the Poles with the words "we forgive and ask for forgiveness."

On the following day, the front page of Super Express, one of more popular Polish dailies, read "Unheard-of tactlessness: Occupier's daughter forgives us!" reflecting the reaction of a large part of the public in Poland to the BdV leader's gesture.

In Germany, meanwhile, indignation was voiced over a picture that appeared several days before the debate on the cover of Wprost weekly, presenting Steinbach dressed in SS uniform straddling the back of Chancellor Schröder. "What Ms. Erika Steinbach has done in recent months and what she continues to do for Polish-German relations allows us to publish this kind of cover without scruples. She is confusing the categories of executioner and victim," said Piotr Gabryel, deputy editor-in-chief of Wprost.

"I am very worried about the discord perceptible for several weeks in Polish-German relations," said Henning Tewes of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which co-organized the discussion together with Rzeczpospolita editors. "The accusations directed to the opposite side cause resentment. Concern about preventing this was the main idea behind the meeting." The effect, however, was far from the one intended.
Recent German Claims Against Poland
Krzysztof Rak and Mariusz Muszyński

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Poland is probably the only country in which large fractions of the national elites permit
unreasonable demands from abroad to be made against the nation, and question the necessity of structuring one’s responses to the world in terms of national interest. Members of such elites thus undermine the most self-evident principle of foreign policy: the defense of the interests of one’s country. The reasons for assuming such attitudes are numerous and include naivete, intellectual besserwissenschaft, party fractionalism, and the habit of servility born during centuries of forfeited sovereignty. The most recent example is the situation that resulted from the demand by some German groups for financial reparations from Poland to partially compensate for Germans’ territorial losses after the Second World War.

In 2006, the Prussian Trust, an organization representing German postwar expellees from Central and Eastern Europe, submitted a claim against Poland to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, alleging that Poland committed crimes during the forced evacuation of Germans to Germany in 1945. [1] While Polish Foreign Minister Anna Fotyga pointed out that “the resettlement of the German population was decided by the governments of the United States, Great Britain, and the USSR” and “the World War II . . . began with the German attack on Poland and caused irreparable losses and sufferings to the Polish state and nation,”[2] the German government said nothing. Given the fact that in 1945 the entire territory of Poland was occupied by the Soviets, the only sensible policy regarding such demands is for the German government to step in and make them an internal German problem. The Polish government proposed such a solution, but even in Poland some opposition leaders protested. One of the leaders of the Civic Platform Party [one of the opposition parties] proposed a similar solution somewhat earlier. However, other members of the political elites disagreed-even though their financial or ideological interests trumped national interest in this case.

Several arguments have been used by such political circles to justify their stance. The first is that such demands have been raised by marginal German groups and therefore should not be taken seriously. However, the so-called Vertriebene and their descendants constitute a well-disciplined electorate consisting of several million people. Before each election the political forces in Germany compete for this electorate. It was the fear of losing it that in 1990 made Chancellor Helmut Kohl resist the signing of the treaty with Poland that confirmed the present borders. It is because of this electorate that the chancellors and presidents of Germany grace with their presence the congresses of the “expellees,” not to speak of the fact that in the coalition agreement between CDU and SPD the government promised not to forget them. [3] J. K. Fromme, head of the expellees’ caucus in the CDU/CSU fraction of the Bundestag, has stated that the burden of guilt for the outcome of the Second World War is shared by Adolf Hitler and Poland, and that the Potsdam agreements [confirming the present borders of Poland] were merely “the minutes of certain negotiations” rather than an international agreement on which the present order of Europe rests.[4] Ms. Erika Steinbach, head of the Prussian Trust and a Bundestag member, has compared the deportations of Germans to the Holocaust, and ridiculed the Warsaw Uprising.[5] Do these people represent the margins of German society? We doubt it. Has any Parliament member in Poland compared the massacre of Poles in Volhynia during the Second World War to the genocide of Jews engineered by the Germans? Has any member of the Polish Parliament ever made claims against the Ukrainians because Poles lost their properties in Ukraine? Has anyone in Poland ever compared the Ukrainian misdeeds against Poles to the crimes of Hitler or Stalin? Of course not. Why don’t we ask our western neighbor to react to the trashing of standards of political decency by some of their compatriots?


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Given the fact that in 1945 the entire territory of Poland was occupied by the Soviets, the only sensible policy regarding restitution demands is for the German government to step in and make them an internal German problem.


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The second argument in favor of doing nothing about such German demands is that any Polish attempt to close the issue of Polish-German war damages once and for all would legitimize German demands that have no legal value at present. To this we say that such claims should not be directed at the Polish state, period. If the claims are indeed of no consequence, the German government would not have argued that it cannot dismiss them because in such a case the expellees would have made claims against the German government itself. It is incomprehensible why certain parts of the Polish political elite accept this argument of the German government. Do those who accept it prefer that the claims be directed at Poland rather than Germany? Apparently the Poles are considered incredibly naive by the German government if it continues to maintain that the Prussian Trust’s claims have no legal value while at the same time accepting international norms concerning the property of private persons, norms that will be tested in the Strasbourg court as a result of the Prussian Trust’s actions. One can, of course, take the position that such claims are not justified. However, once legal procedures are initiated against Poland, the decision will not be in the hands of the respective governments but in the hands of an international court. Furthermore, it should be remembered that with regard to “expulsions and expropriations,” the German legal doctrine accepts no statute of limitations.[6] In practice, this means that the German side could wait for generations for a favorable evolution of the political situation, or for an international law that would open the door to the possibility of pursuing such claims against a weaker neighbor.

It could be argued that such an evolution has already begun. The doctrine of the rights of individuals has trumped national sovereignty on a number of occasions. The argument about restitution of German property is another step in this process. The evolution of the legal system in Europe has bestowed genuine rights on the individual. It is now possible to sue a sovereign country before an international tribunal. The Prussian Trust knows well that by ratifying the European Convention of Human Rights, Poland accepted that standard and the jurisdiction of the Strasbourg Tribunal.

It should also be remembered that, in this case, the argument that laws cannot be introduced retroactively may not work. The Strasbourg Tribunal operates according to the rule of “continuous consequences” (naruszenie ciągłe): if an act deemed illegal took place before the country ratified the Convention on Human Rights and the consequences of that act are still in operation today, the tribunal may intervene. This happened in 1996 when the state of Turkey lost the case against a Cypriot Greek even though the property dispute took place before Turkey ratified the convention. It is significant that the Prussian Trust refers to that particular case (Loizidou vs. Turkey) in its actions against Poland. A German proverb says: “In the court of law and at sea only God decides.” In contrast, in Poland such demands have been perceived through the lens of the law of absolute primacy of the state over the citizen, which prevailed in Soviet-occupied Poland for two generations.

Few people in Poland or elsewhere know that in Germany there exists a vast literature justifying German property claims in territories that had been granted to Poland through international agreements after the Second World War (the same agreements deprived Poland of eastern territories from which hundreds of thousands of Poles were expelled without any restitution of property whatsoever). In present-day Germany there is hardly a single international law specialist that does not have in his curriculum vitae at least one article dedicated to the postwar fate of the expellees. The conclusions of such articles are generally anti-Polish. The vocabulary used in German public life-the key concepts of “expulsion” (Vertreibung) and “dispossession” (Enteignung)-contain legally detrimental connotations. Poles and others have also forgotten that one of the most respected authorities in international law, Professor Alfred Verdross, introduced (in collaboration with Professor Bruno Simma, now a judge in the International Tribunal in the Hague) into international law the institution of territorial supervision. This annulled the finality of Polish rights regarding post-German territories given to Poland after the Second World War[7] while at the same time cutting off eastern territories from the Polish state, thus initiating the painful and costly (to Poles) relocation of the Polish population from present-day Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine to western territories, from which Germans were relocated to Germany.

The third argument minimizing the claims of the Prussian Trust has to do with the allegedly radically changed nature of German patriotism. The argument claims that the German national consciousness has been radically changed, and therefore a danger of Germans engaging in any form of aggression against their eastern neighbor is thus simply moot. It is true that Germany went though a period of soul-searching after the Second World War, especially regarding the Jews and the Holocaust. However, such a soul-searching has never taken place regarding the Catholic Poles. It also appears that not only ordinary Germans but also German historians harbor an idealized picture of their actions in Poland in 1939-45, and the catastrophic destruction of Polish lives and property in the second world war. What is more, for a quarter-century now the historical debate in Germany (Historikerstret) has involved a number of serious historians who have posited that the crimes Germans committed in the Second World War were not exceptional, given that the twentieth century was a century of genocides such as that of the Armenians, the Ukrainians, and so on. If so, then the German nation is no more responsible for the history of that century than any other nation. In this context it can hardly be surprising that some segment of the expellees group accuses the victims of being the executioners, and is close to accusing Poles of genocide of the Germans before an international tribunal.[8] If such people as Rudi Pawelka [the founder of the Prussian Trust], Steinbach, and Fromme are representative of German public opinion at least in part, then the concerns expressed in this article are far from being groundless. Finally, some Polish specialists in German affairs reach for geopolitical arguments and maintain that arguing with the Germans about the Prussian Trust destroys the chances of a successful Polish presence in European politics. They maintain that these arguments are moot, and that they have to do with historical interpretations rather than with contemporary politics. However, the postulate of “choosing the future” while abstracting from the past is impossible to put to practice. A collective brainwashing that would lead to historical amnesia, even if it occurred with full consent of the Poles, cannot be accomplished. All previous attempts to amputate memory have failed, not only in Poland but everywhere else. The most recent attempt, that of the Soviets, ended in a spectacular failure. We therefore maintain that an attempt to excise the memory of past events would have negative results for European identity.

The process of European integration is not an abstract construct, but is related to the future vitality and viability of the continent. Its roots go back to the problem Europe faced between 1871 and 1945: how to arrange the continent in such a way as to accommodate Germany in Europe. Germany is stronger than other European countries, but it is too weak to become an international superpower. President Francois Mitterrand’s policy regarding German reunification exemplified the dilemma facing Germany’s neighbors. Germany’s strength naturally pushes it toward attempts at domination, but these attempts ended with German defeat in the two world wars. Thus European integration was conceived as a means to enable Germany to peacefully coexist with other European nations and to rein in its dominating tendencies. A fundamental condition of such a solution was the Germans’ assumption of historical guilt, owing to which Germany assumed such a nobly responsible role concerning the rest of Europe in the second part of the twentieth century. It was this double burden the Germans carried-an admission of guilt and the weight of leadership-that is a major reason for the successes of European integration so far. Today we observe a reversal of this historical policy, and attempts to relativize German guilt on the one hand, and a general European disinterest in long-term consequences of political passivity on the other. It is not an accident that the Germany of Gerhard Schröder, Erika Steinbach, and Rudi Pawelka backed off from the process of deepening European integration.

The arguments raised by some Poles and others concerning the issue of German demands thus amount to saying that it is imprudent of Poles to display politically aggressive behavior toward the Germans. Such a stance shows full disregard for facts: it is not Poles but Germans who are asking for reparations, while common sense tells us that the situation ought to be reversed. In 1945 Poland was nominally one of the victorious members of the anti-Nazi coalition, but in practice it lost the war because it was occupied by the USSR. Poles got no restitution from the Germans for the unspeakable losses of life and property. The argument that the so-called “western” (post-German) territories allotted to Poland by the Great Powers constituted such restitution is flawed. Before the Poles assumed jurisdiction over these territories, the Red Army plundered everything that was worth plundering, dispatching entire factories to the USSR by train and truck and destroying such cities as Danzig/Gdańsk. The Polish victims of Nazi terror received no financial reparations. The minuscule payments of 1991-2006 cannot be treated as reparations: even the German side admitted that they were given de gratia, as a kind of charity donation to the destitute. The government of Soviet-occupied Poland extracted 100 million DM from the pockets of the “western revanchists”; these monies then disappeared, allegedly into the state treasury, some of it into the pockets of the apparatchiks; they have never been properly accounted for. In the 1990s the post-Round Table Polish governments took the line of least resistance and did not raise the issue of reparations. It is thus justifiable to say that Poles and the descendants of Polish victims of the Nazis never received any reparations whatsoever.

The history of Polish-German relations during the last half-century is the history of one-sided Polish relinquishments of the right to demand reparations. In 1953 Bolesław Bierut, president of Soviet-occupied Poland, renounced any war reparation claims against DDR [East Germany]. Even though the documentation is missing, it has been assumed that in 1970 the government of Soviet-controlled Poland confirmed this renunciation in a treaty that normalized Polish-German relations. In 1991 Prime Minister Krzysztof Bielecki’s government renounced support for any individual claims by non-Jewish Polish victims of the Nazis. In 1994 Prime Minister Marek Belka confirmed this stance. Thus the Polish side had long ago renounced all claims to the restitution of property and compensation for life and hardship incurred during the Second World War. Yet today, some members of the Polish political elites accept German claims to property restitution from Poland! Moreover, these politicians accuse of radicalism all those who try to point out these facts.Professor Alfons Klafkowski, who specializes in Polish-German relations between 1945-89, has estimated that Polish claims against Germans concerning Polish property lost or destroyed amounted to half a trillion dollars (in 1980 dollars).[9] He suggested raising this issue with the government of Germany. What happened instead was a decision by the German authorities to extend pitifully small alms to a few thousand survivors who experienced health-destroying slave labor in Germany during the war, or otherwise were mistreated, imprisoned, or tortured by the German Nazis.

In view of the above, the accusations of radicalism that are sometimes extended toward Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński by those who oppose progress in Poland are absurd. On many occasions, the Polish prime minister has proposed the signing of a Polish-German treaty that irrevocably and finally denounces all claims by either side concerning losses in the Second World War (see his interview in this issue of Sarmatian Review, or the October 2006 article in the German Bild). In Germany such a proposal should be considered minimalist, and should be welcome. Kaczyński took a bold step renouncing mutual claims once and for all. Will the German side respond?

Over the last fifteen years, the consecutive governments of Poland acted as if the former communists could become model Europeans in the nick of time, and the Polish foreign policy was often conducted in defiance of the Polish national interest. Claims of the importance of national interest were ridiculed as backward and reactionary. The government of Prime Minister Kaczyński is trying to reverse this trend. There are serious issues in Polish-German relations that need discussing: the issue of the Prussian Trust, the issue of the version of history actively promoted in Germany today, the issue of the Szczecin Bay rights, the issue of the status of the Polish language in Germany and of the Polish minority in Germany. We will be able to solve these issues if the Germans begin to treat Poland as a partner, and not as a country that can be disingenuously excluded from the process of mutual recognition.

Translated by the Sarmatian Review staff.



NOTES
1. Piotr Jędroszczyk, “Wysiedleni žądają zwrotu mienia w Polsce,” Rzeczpospolita, 19 December 2006.
2. Website of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, , as of 30 January 2007.
3. Deputy Hans-Joachim Otto’s query (FDP) published in Bundestag Drucksache 16/2584, questions 21 and 22: “What specific step has the federal government taken to redress the injustices of the expulsion, as promised in the coalition agreement between CDU, CSU, and SPD signed 11 November 2005, p. 114?” Polish Foreign Ministry site, , as of 30 January 2007.
4. An interview with CDU MP J. K. Fromme, Rzeczpospolita, 12 December 2006.
5. Erika Steinbach, “Das Gewissen is gegen Vertreibungen sensibiliziert,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 26 August 1999; Deutsche Radio, ; .
6. D. Blumenwitz, Das Offenhalten der Vermoegensfragen in deutsch-polnischen Beziehungen (Bonn, 1992); “Konwencja o nie stosowaniu przedawnienia wobec zbrodni wojennych i zbrodni przeciwko ludzkosci,” Dziennik Ustaw, 26 November 1968 (Dz. U. 70.26.208).
7. A. Verdross, B. Simma, R. Geiger, Territoriale Souveränität und Gebietshoheit. Zur völkerrechtlichen Lage der Oder-Neisse Gebiete (Bonn, 1980).
8. In Die Geschichte der Oder-Neisse-Linie (München: Olzog, 2006), author Michael A. Hartenstein claims that the reason for changing the Polish-German borders in 1945 was Polish nationalism.
9. Alfons Klafkowski, The Problems of War Compensation Connected With World War II (Poznań, 1991); n.a., “Sprawozdanie Biura Odszkodowań Wojennych - Straty wojenne Polski,” January 1947.