Germany’s government has failed to set aside funds to compensate the remaining Polish survivors of Nazi occupation, despite years of negotiations between Berlin and Warsaw over the issue, according to a German foreign office spokesman.
Josef Hinterseher confirmed in late September that the current draft budget contains no provision for payments to survivors of concentration camps, ghettos, death marches, forced labour or the Warsaw Uprising who are still living in Poland. Between 30,000 and 50,000 such individuals remain alive, though all are now over 90 years old and their numbers decline every week.
Writing in Notes from Poland, Philipp Fritz, the Warsaw correspondent for German newspaper Die Welt, called Germany’s inaction a “declaration of moral bankruptcy”. He noted that at the same press conference where Hinterseher confirmed no compensation decision had been made, the spokesman moved on to discuss two Russian oligarchs being removed from EU sanctions lists – a decision Berlin had failed to oppose.
“The fact that these two issues were dealt with publicly one after the other shows that the German government is quicker to reach a decision that makes Putin’s supporters’ lives easier than it is with victims of the Nazi terror,” Fritz wrote.
Shift from reparations to ‘making amends’
Poland’s approach to the issue has shifted significantly since Donald Tusk’s government came to power. In December 2023, Warsaw stopped demanding war reparations and began talking about “making amends” instead. The previous national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government had demanded the equivalent of €1.3 trillion from Germany.
Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski called on Germany to “think creatively” about compensation during a visit to Berlin in January 2024, saying the new government would “end the cold war” waged by PiS against Germany.
According to Fritz, former German Chancellor Olaf Scholz reportedly offered Tusk a one-off payment in 2024, but Poland’s prime minister rejected the sum as insufficient. Polish diplomats are instead demanding monthly pensions for survivors. The total cost would amount to a few hundred million euro – a relatively modest sum compared to other budget items.
Allegations of diplomatic foot-dragging
Fritz reports that German foreign ministry officials are rumoured to be asking Poland for guarantees that there will be no future reparations demands, or at least that the German gesture will receive positive press coverage in Poland. If true, Fritz argues, this would be “thoroughly indecent, bringing to mind an image of a perpetrator trying to buy his victim’s silence”.
The journalist called on German Chancellor Friedrich Merz to work with the foreign and finance ministries to include compensation in the budget, describing it as “a belated but major and morally right gesture”. He also suggested that German civil society and corporations that benefited from forced labour during the occupation – including BASF, Siemens, Volkswagen, BMW and Deutsche Bank – could establish a fund to provide monthly payments to survivors.
Fritz noted that Poland covers almost all the costs of maintaining former Nazi-German camps on its territory, spending more on this than Germany has paid in compensation to Polish war victims.
What this means for Poles in Poland
For the thousands of elderly Poles who survived the Nazi occupation, Germany’s continued delay represents a missed opportunity for recognition and practical support in their final years. All survivors are now over 90, often living alone and in poor health, with their numbers shrinking weekly. The lack of progress has created widespread frustration in Poland, reinforcing perceptions that Berlin is simply waiting for the issue to resolve itself through the passage of time.
For Polish society more broadly, the compensation question touches on deeper issues of historical justice and bilateral relations with Germany. The current government’s more conciliatory approach – focusing on modest monthly pensions rather than massive reparations – was designed to give Berlin an opportunity to make a meaningful gesture without enormous financial cost. Germany’s apparent reluctance to act, despite the relatively small sums involved, risks damaging relations between the two countries and leaving a lasting sense of injustice among Poles who believe their wartime suffering has never been adequately acknowledged.
