Arkadiusz Mularczyk announced the initiative in an interview with Polish state news agency PAP on Wednesday.
The Polish deputy foreign minister said that researchers had already begun work on the report, “compiling data in archives and libraries” over “many months.”
Mularczyk announced that the preparation of the report would be officially launched at a conference in Pruszków near Warsaw next week.
He said the event on September 19-20 would bring together “dozens of scientists from Poland as well as other countries, including Ukraine.”
The researchers will compile “reports on specific issues” that will later add up to a comprehensive “report on the losses incurred by Poland at the hands of the Soviet Union between 1939 and 1945,” Mularczyk said.
He cautioned that the research team had to “start from scratch” as Poland’s war losses caused by the Soviet Union could not be studied in the communist era.
“These losses were gigantic, not only in terms of material infrastructure, but also because of the organised looting of works of art and culture, as well as the resources of insurance companies and banks,” Mularczyk said.
He added that "the so-called liberation” of Poland by the Soviet Union in 1945 “was also followed by gigantic plunder.”
He said in the interview that "relevant information" could also be found in archives in Ukraine and Belarus, which were currently difficult to access due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko’s “hostile policy towards Poland.”
Mularczyk said it was too early to set a definite date for the publication of a final report on Poland’s losses at the hands of the Soviet Union between 1939 and 1945, the PAP news agency reported.
Warsaw demands WWII damages from Germany
In April, Poland’s government adopted a resolution “on the need to regulate, in Polish-German relations, the issue of reparations, compensation and redress” for the losses caused by the German invasion and subsequent occupation of Poland during World War II.
The Polish government said the document “confirms that the issue of compensation for the damage and harm caused by Germany during World War II has not been settled in the form of an international agreement between the Republic of Poland and the Federal Republic of Germany, and that such an agreement must be entered into.”
In September last year, the Polish government announced that the losses suffered by Poland at the hands of Nazi Germany during World War II totalled PLN 6.22 trillion (EUR 1.3 trillion) and that it would demand compensation from Berlin.
In October, Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau signed a formal note to the government in Berlin, demanding compensation for losses Poland sustained during the war.
According to the German government, "the issue of reparations and compensation for World War II losses remains closed” and Berlin "does not intend to enter into negotiations on the matter," officials have said.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, Interia.pl