Poland Slams Stoiber’s Comments on Wartime Expulsions

Poland Slams Stoiber’s Comments on Wartime
Expulsions

Polish leaders strongly rejected a call by
German chancellor candidate Edmund Stoiber last week for the
cancellation of two sets of decrees under which millions of ethnic
Germans were expelled from Poland and the then-Czechoslovakia after
World War II.

Stoiber, who is the Christian Democratic
chancellor hopeful in Germany’s September parliamentary elections,
said on 23 June that he would launch talks with Warsaw and Prague
on the issue if he wins the elections.

While Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller was
initially reluctant to comment on Stoiber’s statement, two days
later he described the comments as “an irresponsible act, which
could become a factor in the deterioration of Polish-German
relations.” He added that “the Polish government is not going to
open this question because we consider the expulsion problem to be
definitely closed.”

On 23 June, Polish Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz
Cimoszewicz said on Polish Radio 3 that Stoiber’s remarks were an
uncalled-for attempt at returning to the past. He added that
Poland, if need be, “could show its bills, too”–a thinly veiled
reference to the devastating Nazi German occupation of Poland
during World War II. There was a similar response this week by Jan
Zahradil, the foreign-policy spokesman of the Czech opposition
party, the Civil Democrats (ODS), who warned that if German
pressure continues to mount, his party may raise the issue of
post-war reparations.

But Cimoszewicz added that the Polish government
would not officially answer Stoiber’s claims. “All politicians,
regardless of the country and moment in time, should remain calm
and retain common sense, and not open the closed chapters of the
past. Nothing good can come out of it.”

After World War II, the Allies redrew the map by
moving the Polish-German border to the west. Millions of Germans
were expelled from their homes in the new Polish territories. At
the same time some 2.5 million ethnic Germans were forced to leave
Czechoslovakia. The post-war expulsions have long been a point of
tension in Central Europe, and the issue seemed to gain new urgency
after the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the opening of the
borders between Eastern and Western Europe.

Many of the Germans who were expelled and their
descendants have called for the expulsion decrees to be cancelled
and for the restitution of their former property in Poland and
Czechoslovakia. Recently, various German and Austrian politicians
have said the decrees are incompatible with European Union legal
standards.

The Czech and Polish governments have refused to
cancel the decrees. Both countries–which are striving to gain
membership in the EU–argue that the expulsions were part of the
post-war settlement and cannot be revoked. They add that such moves
are unnecessary anyway, as the decrees no longer have legal
force.

Stoiber has long served as regional leader of
the southern German province of Bavaria, where many ethnic Germans
who were expelled from the former Czechoslovakia settled after the
war. Recent opinion polls in Germany have placed his Christian
Democratic Union/Christian Social Union coalition in the lead ahead
of the governing Social Democrats.

Various Polish politicians from both the
governing and opposition parties tried to downplay Stoiber’s
remarks, saying they were just part of the pre-election rhetoric in
Germany. Bronislaw Komorowski, a parliamentarian for the opposition
Civic Platform, said he did not think Stoiber would raise the issue
of the decrees again if his party were to win the elections.

But some Polish politicians, such as Janusz
Dobrosz of the Polish Peasants’ Party, a junior member of the
country’s governing coalition, said they did not think it was just
pre-election rhetoric. Dobrosz was quoted in the Poli sh daily
Rzeczpospolita on 24 June as saying he sees evidence of a “hidden
agenda.” He added that Poland should respond strongly to comments
like those of Stoiber and “raise the alarm that the Germans are
questioning the European order once again.”

On a historical note, Prime Minister Miller
rejected any comparison between the Czech and Polish expulsions.
While he said he supports the position of the Czech
government–which has also refused to re-open the question or to
cancel its expulsion decrees–he said the Allies rather than the
Polish government decided on the Polish expulsions. He also said
the Germans who were expelled from Poland’s new western territories
after the war were German, rather than Polish, citizens. In
contrast, the ethnic Germans who were expelled from the Czech
territories were citizens of Czechoslovakia.

Meanwhile, the German press also dove into the
fray. On 25 June the German newspaper Die Welt ran an editorial
that rejected Miller’s historical arguments. “[Miller] simplifies
the problem quite a lot. According to him, the Polish and Czech
decrees are incomparable because the Czechs made decisions
themselves whereas, in the case of Poland, decisions were made by
the Allies. It’s not like that, Mr. Miller! The bitter truth is
that in both cases Washington and London gave their consent to the
expulsions. And Polish politicians co-organized the expulsions as
well.”

Polish historians say the expulsions were
carried out, in effect, according to the Potsdam Treaty of 1945,
which was signed by the victorious Allies. They do acknowledge that
the post-war Polish communist authorities issued decrees on “the
exclusion of wrongful elements from Polish society” as well as on
the “administration” of all property seized from the Germans. But
they also argue that those decrees have since been annulled.

Wlodzimierz Borodziej, a Polish historian, told
Rzeczpospolita said there are major legal differences between the
post-war Polish decrees and those issued by then-Czechoslovak
President Edvard Benes. “To my knowledge, [the Polish decrees] were
cancelled long ago,” Borodziej was quoted as saying on 24 June.

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