Leaflet drop to highlight post-war ‘violations’

A GERMAN organisation plans to use aircraft to scatter millions of leaflets over Poland to draw attention to German property apparently “looted” by Poles after the war.

The Eastern Property Association says the aerial bombardment, planned for the spring, will be part of its “awareness campaign” in Poland to raise the issue of German property expropriated by Poland after large areas of the Third Reich became part of modern Poland due to a wartime agreement.

Often German homeowners were given little notice of their eviction, and it in some cases violence was used against them.

“From May we will distribute millions of leaflets which will inform Poles about Polish crimes against German civilians and Polish violations of international law,” the organisation said in an e-mail sent yesterday to Polish news organisations. It added they would organise demonstrations in towns that were once German, with the broad aim of regaining the property “looted after the Second World War”.

But talk of handing property back touches a raw nerve in Poland. The country suffered vast levels of destruction and a massive loss of life at the hands of Germany during the war, so any insinuation that Poland should recompense Germans for apparent loss of property is regarded as both insensitive and insulting.

Complicating the issue further is that many of the Poles who moved into German houses had themselves been expelled from Polish territory in the east ceded to the Soviet Union, under the same agreement that deprived the Germans of their homes.

The Polish government refuses to countenance any return of property, and Berlin, aware of Polish sensitivities on the issue, has stayed clear of the subject.