Poles Seek Trump's Help to Get Reparations From Russia, Germany

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A coalition of Polish patriots and Christians launched a petition seeking help from U.S. President Donald Trump in securing World War II reparations from Germany and Russia, which literally destroyed and enslaved the nation during and after the war. Efforts to force German and Russian authorities to pay for wrongs perpetrated against Poland have been publicly supported from the highest levels of that nation’s government. But the push is being resisted by Moscow and Berlin.

The history is horrifying. As part of a pact between Adolf Hitler’s mass-murdering National Socialist (Nazi) regime in Germany and Joseph Stalin’s mass-murdering International Socialist dictatorship in Russia, the two governments invaded Poland in September of 1939. In addition to the unparalleled destruction, the socialist allies slaughtered some six million innocent Poles (including three million Polish Jews), almost one fourth of the nation’s population. Poland and its capital city, Warsaw, were literally reduced to rubble in the years that followed

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Under the supervision of the U.S. government, most of the nations and peoples victimized by Hitler’s National Socialists were compensated by German taxpayers over the years that followed. Germany has paid out almost $90 billion in WWII reparations so far. But the Poles, whose nation was destroyed and left under Soviet slavery after the war, have not been so fortunate, receiving just $2 billion so far. And so, in 2017, the Polish government began a fresh effort to obtain compensation. Parliament even set up a committee to determine how much was owed and to push for reparations from Germany.

With the effort apparently going nowhere, a group of patriotic Christian Poles known as the November 11 Movement, which describes itself as Poland’s only biblical anti-globalist party, launched the petition to the White House. “Free Poles are appealing to the USA, the victor in World War II and the guarantor of the post-war agreements, for assistance in regaining war reparations from Germany and Russia,” states the petition on the White House website seeking President Trump’s assistance in pressuring the two powers.

“Achieving this historical justice is important for moral and historical reasons,” continues the petition, which was launched on February 18 and has received more than 6,500 signatures so far. “Moreover, it plays a key role in Poland becoming a strong ally of the United States in the face of the threat that arises in Europe and Asia — a new Empire of Evil.”

One of the lead figures behind the petition, Polish Evangelical Pastor and TV host Pawel Chojecki of Lublin, who serves as vice president of the November 11 Movement (Ruch 11 Listopada in Polish), said the effort was crucial to stifling the “imperialist plans of Germany and Russia.” In a statement to The New American magazine, Chojecki argued that the reparations money could be used by Poland to buy military equipment — primarily from the United States — to help prevent a potential World War III in the region.

The pastor also argued that it would be in the interest of the United States. “Today Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin are trying again to implement a plan of creating Euroasia,” he explained. “In particular, close alliance between Russia and Germany that is aimed at USA, manifested for example by EU dependency on Russian gas. If those imperialist plans of Russia and Germany are not stopped, it is possible that in near future more American soldiers and civilians will have to die to stop criminal plans of Russia, Germany and China.”

But by helping to build up a strong Poland, Chojecki said the scheming of “former” communist Merkel and the Putin regime, which is now in the process of building a “Eurasian Union,” could be stopped. “Their plans can be thwarted by supporting a formation of strong Poland and Three Seas pact which connects states of Central and Eastern Europe between Russia and Germany,” he said. “Only strong Poland can be effective in foiling a plan of creating Euroasia — yet another variant of Hitler-Stalin pact aimed at the USA.”

Aside from geopolitical considerations, Chojecki also pointed to “moral reasons” for free societies to help Poland achieve justice for the atrocities perpetrated against her by her socialist neighbors. The Polish pastor also pointed to the words of U.S. Ambassador to Poland Arthur Bliss Lane in his in his tragic book I Saw Poland Betrayed, in which the U.S. official described the horrifying betrayal of Poland into Soviet communist slavery by globalists and communists working within the U.S. government.

“The responsibility of preventing a Communist seizure of Italy, France or any other country, and of restoring freedom to Poland and to other nations, rests on the people of the United States and of all other democracies,” Bliss Lane wrote. Interestingly, in the 1950s, the brutal Soviet puppet state that enslaved Poland with assistance from subversives in the U.S. government purported to waive Poland’s right to compensation for losses suffered during World War II.

Speaking to Putin, Chojecki had some firm words. “I’m sure that you read the great piece of Russian literature Crime and Punishment,” he said. “Attacking Poland in collusion with Adolf Hitler in 1939 was a monstrous crime which destroyed our country, our economy and led to the death of 6 million Polish citizens, including 3 million Polish Jews. The fact that after that Hitler and Stalin turned against each other did not cover the crime committed by Russia in 1939.”

“Wherever there is crime, as Dostoyevsky wrote, there shall be a punishment,” the Polish pastor continued. “You made millions of dollars on fraudulent gas deals with Poland. To this day you use your advantage over Poland that you gained in 1939. You will never become a member of the family of free nations if you will not repair the harms done by your predecessors. Case of reparations for Poland is a test of understanding the principle of justice: There was a crime, there shall be a punishment!”

Efforts to extract reparations from Merkel’s government have some official support. In 2017, on the anniversary of the Warsaw uprising in which Poles rose up against the Nazis and had their city pounded into the ground in retaliation, Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz said it was time for Germans to “pay back the terrible debt they owe to the Polish people.” No mention was made at the time of the atrocities perpetrated against the Polish nation by the regime in Moscow.

Chief of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party Jaroslaw Kaczynski, meanwhile, said the Polish government was “preparing itself for a historical counteroffensive.” “We are talking here about huge sums, and also about the fact that Germany for many years refused to take responsibility for World War II,” Kaczynski was quoted as saying during a radio interview on the subject.

German officials have not commented directly on the new efforts but claim that Germany stands by its obligations. “Of course Germany stands by its responsibility in World War II, politically, morally and financially,” Merkel spokesman Ulrike Demmer was quoted as saying. “It has made significant reparations for general war damage, including to Poland, and is still paying significant compensation for Nazi wrongdoing.” Meanwhile, German parliamentary “legal experts” claimed Poland has no right to demand compensation.

Estimates calculated between 1945 and 1947 by the Polish War Reparations Bureau suggest the monetary value of losses suffered by Poland at the hands of Nazi Germans in World War II amount to about $50 billion in 1939 dollars. In today’s dollars, adjusted for inflation, that number is around $886 billion, according to Józef Menes, an expert on the parliamentary team set up in 2017 to assess the amount of compensation due from Germany.

The leader of the parliamentary committee, lawmaker Arkadiusz Mularczyk, announced last year that the value of reparations owed by Germany could be around $850 billion. “We are talking about very large but justified sums for war crimes, for the destroyed cities, the lost demographic potential of our country,” Mularczyk told Polsat News, adding that new estimates were still being prepared.

However, that figure only includes losses caused by Hitler’s National Socialist regime. The tremendous losses inflicted on Poland by Soviet Russia, which occupied almost half of the nation’s territory and eventually enslaved it under a communist puppet state, are also massive. Indeed, communist slavery kept the nation from developing for generations, causing incalculable damage — not to mention the mass murder and other destruction unleashed on Poland from Moscow.

The organizers behind the reparations petition to Trump ran a separate petition last year. That one, which secured over 99,000 signatories, urged the White House to support an international investigation into the 2010 Smolensk plane crash that wiped out the entire political leadership of Poland. The victims, including Poland’s president, were on the way to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre in which the Soviet regime slaughtered tens of thousands of Polish military and intellectual leaders.

Photo: JeanRee/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is normally based in Europe. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU or on Facebook.