This Feb. 18, 2011 file photo, shows the Memorial on the grounds of the former German Nazi Death Camp Treblinka, near the village of Treblinka, northeast Poland.| AP

WARSAW: A Polish official said Friday that Germany could owe his country $850 billion (690 billion euros) for the damage it inflicted during World War II.

Arkadiusz Mularczyk is leading a team in the parliament that is assessing potential reparations to Poland. Germany killed 6 million Polish citizens and caused great material losses during its nearly six-year occupation of Poland.

"We are talking about very large, but justified amounts of compensation for war crimes, for destroyed cities, villages and the lost demographic potential of our country," Mularczyk said on Polsat News, a private broadcaster.

Last year, Poland's ruling conservative nationalist Law and Justice party said the nation deserves compensation for its losses and set up a team of lawmakers under Mularczyk's leadership to estimate how much is due.

To date, Poland has not made an official demand. Germany has repeatedly said there is no legal basis for Poland's reparation claims because the matter was settled in a 1953 agreement.

Poland's current authorities have argued the 1953 decision is invalid because it was dictated by Moscow when Poland was a satellite of the Soviet Union.

Since then, Germany has paid some compensation to individual Poles who were forced laborers or victims of German pseudo-medical experiments during the Nazis' wartime occupation.</s>WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland should decide how it manages one of Europe’s last ancient forests in the years ahead, not the EU’s top court, environment minister Henryk Kowalczyk said, setting up a possible confrontation in one of a series of disputes with Brussels.

The European Court of Justice is due to rule in April on an EU complaint that Warsaw’s decision in 2016 to allow more commercial logging in Bialowieza Forest broke the bloc’s laws.

Greenpeace and other campaign groups have said the logging allowed by Warsaw is threatening the UNESCO world heritage site and its populations of European bison, lynx and rare birds.

Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party - already at odds with Brussels over judicial reforms - has said it has the right to manage its own resources and the logging is needed to control a beetle infestation.

Kowalczyk told Reuters he expected the court ruling would focus only on how Poland, the EU’s biggest eastern member, had managed the forest up to now.

The court “will not, however, indicate precisely future methods to protect (the forest), because it would be a transgression beyond its competence,” told Reuters in an interview.

If the court made any specific recommendations about the forest’s future management, particularly if it banned any logging, then the government would have to discuss it, he added.

Warsaw wanted to draw up its own protection plan for the forest, he said. “I expect that it will be a compromise between active and passive protection,” he added, without spelling out how many trees would be removed under an “active” scheme.

An adviser to the EU court said in February that Poland’s decision to increase logging in the forest did break EU law. While judges are not obliged to follow the adviser’s recommendation, they do so in most cases.

Separately, Kowalczyk said he was seeing some support in Europe and beyond for plans, backed by Warsaw, to let nations balance out their carbon dioxide emissions with absorption of greenhouse gases by forests.

The plan would be discussed, he said, at U.N. climate talks that Poland will host in December in its southern city of Katowice - the center of the coal-producing Silesia region.

“The issue of absorbing emissions has its opponents, which is why we realize that these talks will not be easy. We will discuss this - first within the European Union,” Kowalczyk said.

Many countries want to focus more on cuts in emissions, reckoning the idea of absorption is a sideshow favored by coal-dependent states such as Poland.

Kowalczyk said he had received a “clear declaration” from China’s special representative on climate change that Beijing was interested in the scheme.

The minister reiterated that Poland wanted to reduce the share of coal in its electricity production to around 50 percent by 2050 from around 80 percent now.

“We will be moving slowly from coal to other sources, but it is important that it is not too abrupt,” he added.</s>WARSAW, March 28 (Reuters) - Poland should decide how it manages one of Europe's last ancient forests in the years ahead, not the EU's top court, environment minister Henryk Kowalczyk said, setting up a possible confrontation in one of a series of disputes with Brussels.

The European Court of Justice is due to rule in April on an EU complaint that Warsaw's decision in 2016 to allow more commercial logging in Bialowieza Forest broke the bloc's laws.

Greenpeace and other campaign groups have said the logging allowed by Warsaw is threatening the UNESCO world heritage site and its populations of European bison, lynx and rare birds.

Poland's ruling Law and Justice party - already at odds with Brussels over judicial reforms - has said it has the right to manage its own resources and the logging is needed to control a beetle infestation.

Kowalczyk told Reuters he expected the court ruling would focus only on how Poland, the EU's biggest eastern member, had managed the forest up to now.

The court "will not, however, indicate precisely future methods to protect (the forest), because it would be a transgression beyond its competence," told Reuters in an interview.

If the court made any specific recommendations about the forest's future management, particularly if it banned any logging, then the government would have to discuss it, he added.

Warsaw wanted to draw up its own protection plan for the forest, he said. "I expect that it will be a compromise between active and passive protection," he added, without spelling out how many trees would be removed under an "active" scheme.

An adviser to the EU court said in February that Poland's decision to increase logging in the forest did break EU law. While judges are not obliged to follow the adviser's recommendation, they do so in most cases.

Seperately, Kowalczyk said he was seeing some support in Europe and beyond for plans, backed by Warsaw, to let nations balance out their carbon dioxide emissions with absorption of greenhouse gases by forests.

The plan would be discussed, he said, at U.N. climate talks that Poland will host in December in its southern city of Katowice - the centre of the coal-producing Silesia region.

"The issue of absorbing emissions has its opponents, which is why we realize that these talks will not be easy. We will discuss this - first within the European Union," Kowalczyk said.

Many countries want to focus more on cuts in emissions, reckoning the idea of absorption is a sideshow favoured by coal-dependent states such as Poland.

Kowalczyk said he had received a "clear declaration" from China's special representative on climate change that Beijing was interested in the scheme.

The minister reiterated that Poland wanted to reduce the share of coal in its electricity production to around 50 percent by 2050 from around 80 percent now.

"We will be moving slowly from coal to other sources, but it is important that it is not too abrupt," he added. (Editing by Andrew Heavens)</s>WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland should decide how it manages one of Europe’s last ancient forests in the years ahead, not the EU’s top court, environment minister Henryk Kowalczyk said, setting up a possible confrontation in one of a series of disputes with Brussels.

The European Court of Justice is due to rule in April on an EU complaint that Warsaw’s decision in 2016 to allow more commercial logging in Bialowieza Forest broke the bloc’s laws.

Greenpeace and other campaign groups have said the logging allowed by Warsaw is threatening the UNESCO world heritage site and its populations of European bison, lynx and rare birds.

Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party - already at odds with Brussels over judicial reforms - has said it has the right to manage its own resources and the logging is needed to control a beetle infestation.

Kowalczyk told Reuters he expected the court ruling would focus only on how Poland, the EU’s biggest eastern member, had managed the forest up to now.

The court “will not, however, indicate precisely future methods to protect (the forest), because it would be a transgression beyond its competence,” told Reuters in an interview.

If the court made any specific recommendations about the forest’s future management, particularly if it banned any logging, then the government would have to discuss it, he added.

Warsaw wanted to draw up its own protection plan for the forest, he said. “I expect that it will be a compromise between active and passive protection,” he added, without spelling out how many trees would be removed under an “active” scheme.

An adviser to the EU court said in February that Poland’s decision to increase logging in the forest did break EU law. While judges are not obliged to follow the adviser’s recommendation, they do so in most cases.

CLIMATE BALANCE

Separately, Kowalczyk said he was seeing some support in Europe and beyond for plans, backed by Warsaw, to let nations balance out their carbon dioxide emissions with absorption of greenhouse gases by forests.

The plan would be discussed, he said, at U.N. climate talks that Poland will host in December in its southern city of Katowice - the center of the coal-producing Silesia region.

“The issue of absorbing emissions has its opponents, which is why we realize that these talks will not be easy. We will discuss this - first within the European Union,” Kowalczyk said.

Many countries want to focus more on cuts in emissions, reckoning the idea of absorption is a sideshow favored by coal-dependent states such as Poland.

Kowalczyk said he had received a “clear declaration” from China’s special representative on climate change that Beijing was interested in the scheme.

The minister reiterated that Poland wanted to reduce the share of coal in its electricity production to around 50 percent by 2050 from around 80 percent now.

“We will be moving slowly from coal to other sources, but it is important that it is not too abrupt,” he added.</s>WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland should decide how it manages one of Europe's last ancient forests in the years ahead, not the EU's top court, environment minister Henryk Kowalczyk said, setting up a possible confrontation in one of a series of disputes with Brussels.

 The European Court of Justice is due to rule in April on an EU complaint that Warsaw's decision in 2016 to allow more commercial logging in Bialowieza Forest broke the bloc's laws.

 Greenpeace and other campaign groups have said the logging allowed by Warsaw is threatening the UNESCO world heritage site and its populations of European bison, lynx and rare birds.

 Poland's ruling Law and Justice party - already at odds with Brussels over judicial reforms - has said it has the right to manage its own resources and the logging is needed to control a beetle infestation.

 Kowalczyk told Reuters he expected the court ruling would focus only on how Poland, the EU's biggest eastern member, had managed the forest up to now. 

 The court "will not, however, indicate precisely future methods to protect (the forest), because it would be a transgression beyond its competence," told Reuters in an interview. 

 If the court made any specific recommendations about the forest's future management, particularly if it banned any logging, then the government would have to discuss it, he added.

 Warsaw wanted to draw up its own protection plan for the forest, he said. "I expect that it will be a compromise between active and passive protection," he added, without spelling out how many trees would be removed under an "active" scheme.

 An adviser to the EU court said in February that Poland's decision to increase logging in the forest did break EU law. While judges are not obliged to follow the adviser's recommendation, they do so in most cases.

 

 CLIMATE BALANCE

 Separately, Kowalczyk said he was seeing some support in Europe and beyond for plans, backed by Warsaw, to let nations balance out their carbon dioxide emissions with absorption of greenhouse gases by forests.

 The plan would be discussed, he said, at U.N. climate talks that Poland will host in December in its southern city of Katowice - the center of the coal-producing Silesia region.

 "The issue of absorbing emissions has its opponents, which is why we realize that these talks will not be easy. We will discuss this - first within the European Union," Kowalczyk said. 

 Many countries want to focus more on cuts in emissions, reckoning the idea of absorption is a sideshow favored by coal-dependent states such as Poland.

 Kowalczyk said he had received a "clear declaration" from China's special representative on climate change that Beijing was interested in the scheme.

 The minister reiterated that Poland wanted to reduce the share of coal in its electricity production to around 50 percent by 2050 from around 80 percent now. 

 "We will be moving slowly from coal to other sources, but it is important that it is not too abrupt," he added. 

 

 (Editing by Andrew Heavens)</s>WARSAW: Poland's foreign minister has acknowledged the existence of an internal Foreign Ministry document that reveals tension in the US-Polish relationship but denies Polish media suggestions that Washington is imposing "sanctions." The strains have emerged over new Polish legislation that makes it a crime to falsely attributing the Holocaust crimes of Nazi Germany to Poland.

The US fears it could violate free speech. A Polish news portal, Onet.pl, this week reported seeing a document saying Warsaw was informed by the U.S. administration that Polish leaders should not expect meetings with the US president or vice president until the matter is resolved.

Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz largely confirmed that Friday, though he characterized the US message as being "it would be good if meetings at the highest level could take place in an atmosphere when these issues are resolved."</s>KRYNICA ZDROJ, Poland (Reuters) - Poland will continue to refuse to accept migrants under a European Union relocation scheme despite a ruling by EU's highest court that Brussels had the right to force member states to take in asylum seekers, Prime Minister Beata Szydlo said on Wednesday.

"I was convinced that such a decision would be made (by the court), but this absolutely does not change the stance of the Polish government with respect to migration policy," Szydlo told reporters on the sidelines of a business conference.

 Earlier on Wednesday, the European Union's highest court dismissed complaints by Slovakia and Hungary about EU migration policy.

 

 (Writing by Marcin Goettig)</s>BUENOS AIRES, Mar 27 2018 (IPS) - Can an official historical truth be universally imposed in defence of a nation’s reputation? Poland believes that it can, and launched a crusade against those who accuse the Polish State or citizens of complicity with the Holocaust. An Argentine newspaper was its first victim.

An article about a massacre of Jews perpetrated by their own neighbours in a Polish town during World War Two (1939-1945), which was not ordered by the Nazi occupiers, prompted a lawsuit in the Polish courts against the newspaper Página 12 in early March.

Just a few days earlier, an unusual law that caused an international controversy had entered into force in the eastern European country, creating penalties of up to three years in prison for those who claim, anywhere around the world, that Poland or the Poles were responsible for the crimes committed against the Jews in their territory during the Nazi occupation.

“The lawsuit was filed by a group linked to the Polish government. We are going to make an international case of this, not to make ourselves famous, but because they are trying to impose a kind of global censorship for which there are not many precedents around the world,” the chief editor of Página 12, Martín Granovsky, told IPS.

“The article published in Página 12 did not mean to say that all Poles were anti-Semitic or that there were no non-Jewish Poles killed under Nazism. We told about a case of neighbours who tortured and killed other neighbours,” he added.

Granovsky said the lawsuit – of which the newspaper has not yet been notified – will be fought in the courts as well as in the court of public opinion. To this end, Página 12 is contacting organisations that defend journalism and freedom of expression around the world.

The complaint against Página 12, a centre-left newspaper that was founded in the 1980s, after Argentina’s return to democracy following the 1976-1983 dictatorship, was filed by the Polish League Against Defamation, a non-governmental organisation created in 2012 with the aim of “initiating and supporting actions to correct false information about the history of Poland, in particular about the role of the Poles in the Second World War, their attitudes towards the Jews and the German concentration camps,” according to its website.

There is a patent similarity between the organisation’s aims and the philosophy that inspired the bill passed by the Polish parliament on Feb. 1 and signed into law by ultraconservative President Andrzej Duda five days later.

The law, according to a statement issued by Poland’s Foreign Ministry, seeks to “combat all forms of denial and distortion of the truth about the Holocaust, as well as attempts to underestimate (the responsibility) of the real perpetrators.”

“Accusing the Polish State and nation of complicity with the Third German Reich in Nazi crimes is wrong, deceptive and hurtful for the victims,” the text continues.

The U.S. State Department had released a statement, when the Polish parliament was about to sanction the law, saying that it “could undermine free speech and academic discourse.”

The questioning by the United States is of particular significance since it is the main ally of Poland, a country that has been accused of violations of the rule of law by the European Union, of which that country is a member.

In December, the EU began to take steps to sanction Warsaw for the enactment of laws that, it argued, sought to weaken judicial independence.

The U.S. State Department suggested that the attempt to restrict opinions about Poland’s role in the Holocaust will lead the country to greater international isolation, as it pointed out that the law could have repercussions “on Poland’s strategic interests and relations, including with the United States and Israel.”

For Damián Loreti, former director of Communication Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires, the Polish law on the Holocaust “violates all international standards in the field of freedom of expression and scientific research.”

“This is because it tries to impose an official historical truth, against which there can be nothing said to the contrary,” Loreti told IPS.

The academic said that “a country’s honour is not a legitimate legal subject to be protected by imposing restrictions on free speech, according to the European Convention on Human Rights, and it also violates United Nations resolutions.”

The op-ed that triggered the lawsuit was published by Página 12 on Dec. 18, 2017, under the title “Familiar Faces”. It was written by Federico Pavlovsky, a psychoanalyst who told IPS that he preferred not to make public statements while the case was making its way through the courts.

In his column, Pavlovsky describes “one of the cruelest and most incredible events recorded in the Second World War,” which occurred on Jul. 10, 1941 in Jedwabne, 190 km from Warsaw.

“That day, 1500 people killed or watched another 1600 being killed, the latter of whom were of Jewish origin,” reads the article, adding: “One of the peculiarities of this massacre is that in Nazi-occupied Poland, the Germans did not order the killing or participate in it, they merely authorised the sequence of events and took photographs.”

The op-ed basically collects the information made public in 2001 by historian Jan Gross in his book “Neighbours: the destruction of the Jewish community in Jedwabne, Poland”, which had a strong impact both in that country and in the United States.

Gross is a Pole born in 1947, the son of a Jewish father and Christian mother, who in 1969, during the communist regime, went into exile in the United States.

The Polish law punishes in particular anyone who speaks of “Polish concentration camps”, instead of clarifying that they were in Polish territory but were the responsibility of the Nazi regime, which was occupying the country.

“It is true that the Polish state had ceased to exist and that there was only a Polish government in exile in London, which fought the Nazis,” psychotherapist and writer Diana Wang told IPS. The daughter of Holocaust survivors, she was born in Poland in 1945 and has lived in Argentina since the age of two.

“However, Poland has a long tradition of anti-Semitism at a cultural level, and hundreds of thousands of Poles participated in the murder of Jews and appropriated their property,” added Wang, who heads Generations of the Shoah, an organisation dedicated to keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust in Argentina.

“It’s true that to talk about Polish concentration camps does not exactly represent the historical truth, because they were under the control of the Germans, but everyone has the right to say what they want,” said Wang, who after hearing about the lawsuit published an op-ed in Página 12 titled: “Poland can sue me too.”

Since the lawsuit was filed, the newspaper has published daily articles about the legal case and about the history of Jewish people in Jedwabne.</s>WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland should decide how it manages one of Europe’s last ancient forests in the years ahead, not the EU’s top court, environment minister Henryk Kowalczyk said, setting up a possible confrontation in one of a series of disputes with Brussels.

The European Court of Justice is due to rule in April on an EU complaint that Warsaw’s decision in 2016 to allow more commercial logging in Bialowieza Forest broke the bloc’s laws.

Greenpeace and other campaign groups have said the logging allowed by Warsaw is threatening the UNESCO world heritage site and its populations of European bison, lynx and rare birds.

Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party - already at odds with Brussels over judicial reforms - has said it has the right to manage its own resources and the logging is needed to control a beetle infestation.

Kowalczyk told Reuters he expected the court ruling would focus only on how Poland, the EU’s biggest eastern member, had managed the forest up to now.

The court “will not, however, indicate precisely future methods to protect (the forest), because it would be a transgression beyond its competence,” told Reuters in an interview.

If the court made any specific recommendations about the forest’s future management, particularly if it banned any logging, then the government would have to discuss it, he added.

Warsaw wanted to draw up its own protection plan for the forest, he said. “I expect that it will be a compromise between active and passive protection,” he added, without spelling out how many trees would be removed under an “active” scheme.

An adviser to the EU court said in February that Poland’s decision to increase logging in the forest did break EU law. While judges are not obliged to follow the adviser’s recommendation, they do so in most cases.

Separately, Kowalczyk said he was seeing some support in Europe and beyond for plans, backed by Warsaw, to let nations balance out their carbon dioxide emissions with absorption of greenhouse gases by forests.

The plan would be discussed, he said, at U.N. climate talks that Poland will host in December in its southern city of Katowice - the center of the coal-producing Silesia region.

“The issue of absorbing emissions has its opponents, which is why we realize that these talks will not be easy. We will discuss this - first within the European Union,” Kowalczyk said.

Many countries want to focus more on cuts in emissions, reckoning the idea of absorption is a sideshow favored by coal-dependent states such as Poland.

Kowalczyk said he had received a “clear declaration” from China’s special representative on climate change that Beijing was interested in the scheme.

The minister reiterated that Poland wanted to reduce the share of coal in its electricity production to around 50 percent by 2050 from around 80 percent now.

“We will be moving slowly from coal to other sources, but it is important that it is not too abrupt,” he added.</s>WARSAW (Reuters) - Security guards in Poland's Bialowieza Forest have forcibly ejected protesters who sought to stop the felling of trees in one of Europe's last primeval woods, a project that has drawn the threat of a European Union lawsuit.

Earlier this month UNESCO called on Poland to halt logging in Bialowieza, saying it could otherwise decide to put the forest on its list of world heritage sites in danger, while the European Commission asked the European Court of Justice for interim steps to suspend the logging.

 The row is one in a series of clashes between Poland's nationalist-minded government and EU authorities in Brussels. On Friday, Polish lawmakers were set to defy the EU and opposition protesters by backing an overhaul of the judiciary denounced by critics as a lurch towards authoritarianism.

 Soon after the conservative Law and Justice party took power in 2015, Environment Minister Jan Szyszko, a hunter backed by powerful forester and hunter lobbies, approved a tripling in the volume of wood to be harvested in part of Bialowieza.

 Szyszko has argued that logging is needed to protect the woods against a beetle outbreak that is destroying spruce trees in the forest in northeast Poland. 

 In a video seen by Reuters and provided by the conservationist Wild Poland Foundation, guards from an agency that oversees state-run forests used force to carry away several protesters who tried to block the loggers. 

 "The increased logging of old growth forest stands is taking place in Bialowieza Forest. (...) The Ministry has totally ignored both UNESCO and the European Commission," the Wild Poland Foundation said in a statement. 

 The Wild Poland Foundation as well as Greenpeace said their activists were continuing to protest and impede the forest harvesters and expressed concern over "escalating violence" from state authorities. 

 "The protests are being stopped in a more aggressive way then before. The foresters are using more people to protect the machines; they mobilized forest guards from all over Poland," the Wild Poland Foundation statement said. 

 Officials at the environment ministry were not immediately available for comment. 

 In a separate statement on Friday, the ministry criticized non-government organizations for their appeal to protect the independence of courts as parliament pressed on with the judicial overhaul.

 "The appeal clearly shows that the so called environmentalists have taken the side of the total opposition," the ministry statement said.

 

 (Reporting by Agnieszka Barteczko; editing by Mark Heinrich)
Polish environment minister Henryk Kowalczyk says Poland alone should decide the fate of the protected Białowieża Forest, ahead of a European Court of Justice ruling on whether additional logging allowed by the Polish government at the UNESCO world heritage site breaches European Union rules.