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."
Crowds in Bangladesh are flocking to snap photographs with an unlikely social media star — an albino buffalo with flowing blond hair nicknamed “Donald Trump” that is due to be sacrificed within days. Owner Zia Uddin Mridha, 38, said his brother named the 700kg bull over its flowing helmet of hair resembling the signature look of the US president. “My younger brother picked this name because of the buffalo’s extraordinary hair,” he said at his farm in Narayanganj, just outside the capital, Dhaka. Mridha said that a constant stream of curious visitors — social media fans, onlookers and children — have come throughout
It began as a satirical online project. Now millions of young people in India are flocking to it as an outlet for their frustration. A parody political party called the Cockroach Janta Party, with the insect as its symbol, has exploded across India’s social media by turning absurdist humor into protest. Memes and short videos mocking corruption, joblessness and political dysfunction have flooded social media sites, where millions of users are embracing the cockroach — known for its ability to survive harsh conditions — as a tongue-in-cheek symbol of endurance. The online movement’s rise has been unusually rapid. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)
HOTTER: While Indians are accustomed to summer heat, climate change has caused northwestern India to warm faster than other parts of the country, an academic said Roads and markets have emptied during afternoons and some farmers have switched to nighttime work to avoid scorching temperatures as a heat wave grips large parts of India. The India Meteorological Department forecast maximum temperatures for yesterday of about 45°C in the capital, New Delhi, where authorities have opened temporary “cooling zones” to help people cope. The weather department warned that conditions would likely persist across several northern regions in the coming days, with temperatures staying well above seasonal averages. Authorities urged people to stay indoors during the hottest hours and take precautions against heat-related illnesses. India declares a heat wave whenever maximum temperatures
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
RSS