Warsaw is reportedly eyeing changes to the border with the Czech Republic
FILE PHOTO. Polish border marking pole. ©Beata Zawrzel / NurPhoto via Getty Images
Poland’s conservative government has intensified efforts to have the country’s border with the Czech Republic redrawn in a way more favorable to Warsaw, the Rzeczpospolita newspaper reported on Thursday.
The demarcation of the border took place in the 1950s, when the outcome of World War II was being settled. Poland and and what was then Czechoslovakia, who were both part of the Communist bloc at the time, disputed some lands, and Poland believes it didn’t receive its fair share. Warsaw wants to get 368.44 hectares in compensation, the newspaper said.
Polish MP Jaroslaw Krajewski from the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS), told Rzeczpospolita that Poland was right to reject a 2005 Czech proposal to settle the issue by paying compensation.
Poles and Czechs have historic grudges over a portion of land in the Cieszyn Silesia region, which was divided in the 1920s, after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Warsaw also grabbed a chance to seize a disputed piece of Czech territory called Trans-Olza or Zaolzie, when Nazi Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938 under the Munich Agreement with Britain and France. After the Nazis were defeated, Poland returned sovereignty over the land to Czechoslovakia, with a treaty signed in 1958 confirming the status quo.
Last week, Warsaw announced its intention to sue Germany for $1.3 trillion in reparations for the Nazi occupation. The sum was the total estimated in a report released on September 1, the anniversary of the 1939 German invasion of Poland.
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Poland to sue Germany for $1.3 trillion over WWII
The issue of war reparations has hurt Polish-German relations for years. Berlin repeatedly stated that it considered it long closed. But the Polish government insists that the payments received from Germany in the wake of World War II were far too low and that Warsaw accepted them only due to pressure from Moscow.
