Andrzej Duda made the statement in a media interview published on Thursday, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
The president told the wprost.pl website that nobody has compensated Poland for the losses suffered during World War II.
He said: “Poland was successfully rebuilt in many places, but Warsaw had been destroyed irrevocably by the Germans. It was a planned, bestial devastation of a city.”
Duda stressed: “If someone says today that we are stoking unnecessary conflict by demanding reparations, they should ask the Germans why they started the conflict in the first place, in 1939.”
“Poland is due compensation, end of story. And I believe the Germans are also aware of that,” the president said in the interview.
‘Poland should demand reparations also from Russia’
He went on to state: “Germany started World War II and attacked Poland. Of course, Russia joined this war later on and so in my view, we should demand reparations also from Russia.”
Polish Sejm calls on Germany to take responsibility for starting WWII
The president’s words came after the Polish Sejm (lower house) on Wednesday adopted a resolution calling on the German government “to explicitly assume political, historical, legal and financial responsibility for all the consequences caused in the Republic of Poland and to the citizens of the Republic of Poland as a result of the German Third Reich starting World War II.”
The document added that “Poland has not yet received appropriate financial compensation and atonement for the losses suffered by the Polish State during World War II as a result of aggression by the Soviet Union.”
Poland estimates its WWII losses caused by Germany at EUR 1.3 trillion
On September 1, Poland published a report estimating the country’s World War II losses caused by German aggression at EUR 1.3 trillion.
The leader of Poland's ruling conservatives Law and Justice, Jarosław Kaczyński, said that a decision had been made to raise the issue of World War II reparations with Berlin.
Kaczyński added: “It’s about securing compensation, maybe through a long and arduous process, for everything that Germany, the German state, the German nation, did to Poland between 1939 and 1945.”
Last week, government officials said Poland would send a formal note to Germany, demanding reparations for World War II, "in a matter of weeks," the PAP news agency reported.
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Source: PAP, wprost.pl