Chancellor Angela Merkel is being pressed by the German Federation of Expellees to decide on a controversial museum that will depict refugees’ post-War experiences, despite a potential backlash from Warsaw.
The focus of Poland’s ire is the federation’s president and a member of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, Erika Steinbach, who it perceives as the strident voice of an organisation associated with Nazism and the German occupation “and one who will push an anti-Polish agenda.
“There is a coalition agreement [between Germany and Poland] to create a visible symbol against expulsions, and there is a law that should now put everything in place,” said Gesine Schwan, the opposition Social Democrats’ presidential candidate and chief coordinator for German-Polish relations in Berlin.
However, Schwann warned on Wednesday, if Steinbach is made a leading figure on the museum project, Polish fears that it will become a biased “centre against expulsion” could derail trust and add further resentment to an already strained relationship.
The expulsion of German citizens from Eastern lands started when the Red Army entered Poland in 1944.
Historians estimate around 14m Germans were expelled across Europe and between 600,000 and 2m killed between 1944 and 1948. The majority were fleeing areas of Poland, Russia and modern-day Czech Republic.
Memories of the expulsions were the source of a rash of German TV dramas in recent years.
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Last week, Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, Poland’s special representative for relations with Germany, met with Mrs Merkel on the issue and said he was “fully calmed and satisfied” that the German-Polish co-project would depict refugees’ experiences fairly.
Steinbach defended herself this week telling the “Hamburger Abendblatt” that German politicians were to blame for sewing conflict across the border, where Poles have threatened to boycott events with Germany if Steinbach wins a seat on the museum’s board of directors.
“Social Democrats have agitated Poland,” she said. “They told people there that the centre would turn history upside down.”
Ulrich Wilhelm, the German government spokesman, said the federally funded memorial would not attempt to reinterpret the history of the war and its aftermath, and reiterated Germany’s admission of blame for starting the war and all its consequences.
“The present debate is unnecessary and unfortunate,” said Bundestag President Norbert Lammert, who cautioned patience on the controversial project which may take until next year to get under way. “I don’t see the need for any decision right now.”
Following the Kaczynski twins’ fiery opposition to the museum, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has merely advised Germany to keep the museum neutral. He is set to meet with Merkel on Feb 27 in Hamburg.