Poland has released a catalogue documenting Nazi war crimes which led to deaths of over 4.5 as part of its bid to force Germany to pay compensation.
The Central Archives of Modern Records (AAN), based in the Polish capital Warsaw, have published the catalogue on their official website.
The catalogue documents war atrocities against Poland and the country’s war losses between the years 1939 and 1945. The collection of records is based on reports from Poland’s in-exile government after the invasion of the country by Nazi Germany in 1939.
Reports state the AAN catalogue contains over 60,000 digitised documents which are listed in alphabetical order according to the the towns and villages they come from.
AAN spokesman Mariusz Olczak said the catalogue only documents the war crimes which the Polish resistance movement knew of and there may be many more.
Olczak said the documents were principally a record of the crimes committed by Nazi forces on the Polish population, as well as a catalogue of the country’s material losses.
The catalogue will reportedly be used by the Polish government as part of an effort to claim compensation from Germany for losses in World War II (WWII).
The ruling Law and Justice party set up a parliamentary team in September 2017 to estimate the amount Poland could claim in compensation from Germany for damage inflicted in WWII.
Arkadiusz Mularczyk, the Chairman of the team assessing the amount of compensation due to Poland from Germany, stressed: “Now we have public information about human and material losses.”
Mularczyk said the publication of the catalogue was a great success and he believes that it will be a of great help when estimating the amount of the compensation due.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the Law and Justice leader, has previously said that Poland has never received compensation for its gigantic war losses, which he says “we haven’t really worked out to this day”.
The catalogue has also been created for “anyone whose relatives died during WWII on the Polish territories affected by the war”.
The scans of the documents can be downloaded by those interested and citizens can apply to have personal access to the original documents.
Head of the parliamentary reparations team Arkadiusz Mularczyk says he hopes the availability of the documents increases public awareness in Poland of Nazi war crimes.
Mularczyk went to say plans are in place to expand the catalogue and finance more research for the AAN.
The Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) estimates that Nazi genocides killed between 2.7 – 2.9 million Polish Jews and 1.8 – 2.77 million non-Jewish ethnic Poles between 1939 and 1945.
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Story By: Bartosz Staszewski, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
