“The German state of law in the 1960s de facto re-legalized murders of Poles” – said historian prof. Bogdan Musiał during the Congress of National Remembrance organized in Warsaw by the Institute of National Remembrance.
“We are talking about Nazi crimes, but these are German crimes, because in the German state of law, to this day, the laws according to which the Germans murdered Poles have legal force. It was impossible to convict a German criminal because he was executing German law, and ‘the victim is himself guilty because he broke this law’ – for example, he was a Polish intellectual and therefore subject to persecution” – reminded Prof. Musiał. He emphasized that “there is a legal possibility to force the Germans to legally rehabilitate some of the murdered Poles on trial in German courts.”
“It’s about Goering’s ordinance of 1941. It’s about criminal proceedings against Jews and Poles. The Bundestag Act of 1968 said that all these National Socialist judicial murders are invalid according to the law. Of course they meant Jews, Sinti Roma, but this ordinance spoke of Jews and Poles. There were several thousand sentences according to this regulation in Auschwitz alone” – explained the historian.
“So we have Polish victims – also in Auschwitz – who were murdered according to this regulation, have not been rehabilitated to this day and, of course, there is no compensation. Everyone else was paid by the Germans, but not the Poles” – he added.
“We have a tool for this and they gave us this tool – this is the law of the Bundestag. We do not have to go to the German court, just submit an application to the German prosecutor’s office and they cannot reject rehabilitation” – said the expert. “Count how many cases it is for the German courts. Mass!” – he noted.
Anna Wiejak