Bundestag to rehabilitate Polish activists

“A tribute to the Poles”, headlines Gazeta Wyborcza, commenting on the German parliament’s plans to adopt a resolution rehabilitating Polish minority activists persecuted by the Nazis. The document is to be approved on 9 June. The pre-war Union of Poles in Germany (when Germany incorporated parts of what is now modern-day Poland) was a thriving organisation that ran several dozen Polish schools, public libraries and culture centres. In October 1939, it was outlawed, its property confiscated and 1,200 activists sent to concentration camps. Although the resolution does not provide for any compensation for their families, it is, stresses the Warsaw daily, an “extremely important gesture”. The document is also to contain important provisions on creating in Bochum a museum of the Polish community in Germany, and on appointing a Polish community representative with the government in Berlin and plenipotentiaries for related issues with each regional government. The Bundestag resolution, writes Gazeta Wyborcza, will come as a “symbolic closure of one of the last Polish-German controversies”, even if Berlin still “doesn’t want to hear about” formally recognising German-based Poles as an ethnic minority.