Armenia, 6 more countries raise issue of WWII reparations in CoE

PanARMENIAN.Net - MEPs from Armenia joined those of six other countries in asking Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic to examine the lack of a legal path and the discrimination in the right to compensation from Germany for the victims of World War 2, said Arkadiusz Mularczyk, a lawmaker from Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) party.

Also, Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and England have joined the call.

Poland's former Communist government waived its right to German post-war compensation back in 1953, as part of its commitment to "contribute to solving the Germany question in the spirit of democracy and peace."

However, a handful of ministers have in recent days refuted the validity of that waiver, Deutsche Welle says.

Polish Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz said that communist-era Poland was a "Soviet puppet state," whose decision at the time could no longer still be valid. Germans need to "pay back the terrible debt they owe to the Polish people," he told reporters.