The German-Polish reconciliation must not be damaged any more!

Dear Prime Minister,

You must not damage the German-Polish reconciliation any more by extreme statements. Respect for the victims of the Nazi regime should stop you from exaggerating and instrumentalising issues for transparent political interests. Otherwise German politicians could put it to you that Poland could today have eleven million more citizens if Polish districts, authorities and military had not participated in the expulsion, murder and prohibition of return of the East Germans and the discrimination for many years of those left behind and those who were later turned out.

But crimes can in principle not be measured up against each other. The millions of Jewish and Polish victims of Nazi Germany must never be forgotten, tabooed or suppressed. However coming to terms with the past and reconciliation cannot be a "one-way street”. The precondition for genuine reconciliation is the recognition and condemnation of all crimes.

Yours Truly,

Tilman Zülch

Note: "Not blind on either eye” is one of the principles of the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV). Coming to terms with the past belongs to this because it is an essential precondition for work against violations of human rights today. Thus the GfbV pressed in the 1970s in Germany for the recognition of the holocaust against the Sinti and Roma by the then Bundeskanzler and the President of the Republic. The GfbV also showed up the crimes of Stalinism under which the Polish people twice suffered - before and after the Nazi crimes.