Arkadiusz Mularczyk announced the move at a news conference in Warsaw on Wednesday, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
Mularczyk said he had "signed a letter addressed to the Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), with a request for cooperation in retrieving cultural objects looted from Poland.”
Speaking to the media alongside Deputy Prime Minister and Culture Minister Piotr Gliński, Mularczyk said that “the extremely extensive and heavy losses inflicted on Poland during the German invasion and occupation between 1939 and 1945 affected the entire Polish state, but especially the field of culture, art, science and education.”
He added: “The accomplishments and achievements of generations of Polish people, heritage architecture, art collections, libraries and archives were being systematically destroyed and stolen.”
Mularczyk told reporters that "some 50,000 carriages full of furniture, books, paintings and sculptures" were looted from Warsaw alone during World War II.
“According to our estimates, some 500,000 precious and significant resources of Polish culture, of our heritage, were stolen from Poland," he said.
“Today, these things can be found in German homes, mansions and museums,” Mularczyk stated.
He argued that “Germany hasn't been held accountable for the actions of its legal predecessor.” He added: “To this day, we don’t see any willingness to remedy all the damage, the looting, and to return stolen cultural objects and works of art.”
Mularczyk said he had raised the issue during his recent talks with German politicians in Berlin and the topic was also included in Poland’s diplomatic note to Germany demanding compensation for World War II.
“We call on the German government of Germany to hold itself accountable for the looting that was carried out in our country,” Mularczyk told reporters.
Meanwhile, Gliński said that the wartime destruction of Poland's arts and culture, including heritage and religious buildings, at the hands of Nazi Germany, was worth at least PLN 52 billion (EUR 11.1 billion) in today's money, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.
(pm/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP, propertynews.pl