Poland has rejected calls for it to return German cultural treasures, including original manuscripts of Goethe, Beethoven, Mozart and Bach held in Polish archives since World War II, calling such demands "entirely groundless."
Any mention of German claims from World War II is a sore point in Poland, which was invaded by Nazi Germany in 1939 and subjected to a brutal five-year occupation in which 6 million Polish citizens were killed.
The Polish Foreign Ministry, in a statement on Tuesday, rebuffed any prospect of returning cultural items to Germany, saying that "all artworks, library and archive materials and all other objects of a German origin that found themselves on Polish territory in connection with World War II were taken over by the Polish state on the basis of the appropriate legal acts."
The ministry added that the judgment was "final," and said any claims are "entirely groundless and cannot be taken into consideration."
Last week, the leading German daily Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung criticized Poland for not returning treasures from the so-called Prussian State Library, a collection of priceless German books and manuscripts, calling them "the last German prisoners of war."
But German claims on cultural items offend Poles, who remember how Nazis plundered Polish artworks, burned libraries and archives and systematically razed Warsaw, dynamiting cultural landmarks including churches and royal palaces.
"Polish public opinion still remembers the artworks carted away, the burned libraries and archives, whose loss was never made up for," the Foreign Ministry statement said.
The Nazis transferred the collection from Berlin to 29 places across the Third Reich to protect them from Allied bombing. About 500 wooden boxes containing thousands of manuscripts and documents were hidden at the Ksiaz Castle in the Sudety mountains and later moved to a convent further south in what was then Germany.
But they wound up on Polish territory when the border was shifted west following the war. Polish authorities moved the collection to the Jagiellonian University Library in Krakow for safekeeping.
A small part of the collection was returned to Germany in 1977, when the leader of communist Poland, Edward Gierek, gave East German communist leader Erich Honecker seven musical items. They included Mozart's handwritten sheet music to the opera The Magic Flute and part of Beethoven's manuscript of his Ninth Symphony, Jagiellonian Library director Zdzislaw Pietrzyk said.
Warsaw expressed its willingness to discuss a host of issues that have strained relations, but said such talks must "take into consideration the demands of Polish national interest."
Julia Gross, a German Foreign Minister spokeswoman, said the government "welcomes the fact that in this statement the Polish government signaled its readiness for talks."
Asked if talks were still taking place, Gross said that "there are contacts between the two sides but the discussions could be more intensive."
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
RSS