Chancellor Olaf Scholz was expected to arrive in Warsaw bearing gestures to ease the wounds left by German wartime atrocities.

However, on Tuesday, the German leader did not announce the anticipated proposal to financially compensate the surviving Polish victims of German crimes, complicating efforts to improve relations between Berlin and Warsaw.

Germany will „endeavour to provide support for the victims,” Scholz said at a press conference alongside Polish PM Donald Tusk, without offering concrete promises or details on when such compensation might be expected. 

In the lead-up to the visit, German officials had indicated that Scholz was expected to announce a plan to compensate surviving victims of Nazi Germany as part of a broader effort to mend long-strained ties. Relations between the two countries had significantly deteriorated under the previous Polish government, which demanded Berlin to pay over €1 trillion in war reparations. Germany rejected those demands, stating the matter was „closed” due to a series of postwar agreements.

The current Polish government has dropped the reparation demands, but Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski has called on Germany to find a „creative solution” to compensate the Polish people for their suffering. Read: Germany officially refused to pay reparations to Poland for WWII.

Details of the failed attempt to reach an agreement between Tusk and Scholz earlier this week have not been comunicated. It remains unclear whether the German side had been unable to provide a concrete proposal or whether Warsaw rejected the German proposal as insufficient.

Image: X (@KPRM_CIR)

Author: Sébastien Meuwissen