Poland’s Jacek Czaputowicz and Germany’s Heiko Maas laid wreaths at a monument honouring thousands of people killed by the Nazi Germans during a massacre in the Polish capital’s Wola district in the early days of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.
Jacek Czaputowicz (right) and Heiko Maas (centre) during the wreath-laying ceremony at the Monument to the Victims of the Wola Massacre in Warsaw on Thursday. Photo: PAP/Rafał Guz
The two foreign ministers were later in the day scheduled to visit a museum documenting the heroic revolt in the Polish capital 75 years ago and meet with a group of young Poles and Germans.
Germany’s Maas was in Warsaw on a two-day visit for talks with Polish officials and to take part in events to mark the 75th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, a 63-day World War II revolt in which Poles took up arms against their German occupiers.
Polish-German talks during Maas' visit have focused on a range of issues affecting bilateral relations, including the issue of responsibility for World War II, according to officials.
Maas said in Warsaw on Wednesday that his country felt moral responsibility for the huge damage done to occupied Poland during World War II.
Nearly 6 million Polish citizens were killed during the war from 1939 to 1945, when their country was invaded by Nazi Germany.
Poland’s conservative leader Jarosław Kaczyński said in May that over EUR 1 trillion in war reparations could be owed to his country, which suffered massive destruction at the hands of Nazi Germany in World War II.
Maas was on Wednesday quoted as saying that for Germany the issue of reparations was “closed from the legal point of view.”
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Source: IAR