Germany is to step up efforts to assuage Polish concerns over plans for a centre to commemorate the sufferings of Germans expelled from Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, parliament in Berlin was told Wednesday, according to dpa. Culture Minister Bernd Neumann told the Bundestag he would visit Warsaw at the head of a delegation on February 5 to discuss Polish objections to a planned memorial to be established in Berlin. The delegation would discuss the plans put forward thus far and "assess the options for German-Polish cooperation," Neumann said. The German government has committed itself to establishing what it calls a "visible sign" to mark the sufferings of ethnic Germans expelled from Poland and other Eastern European countries in the aftermath of the war. The plans have met with opposition in Eastern Europe, particularly in Poland, where leading politicians have warned against a revision of history that could cast Germans as victims rather than aggressors in the war. The memorial is likely to take the form of a document centre set up under the auspices of the German Historical Museum. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has taken a softer line on the issue than his predecessor, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, under whose two-year term of office relations with Germany were chilly. But he also opposes the centre and has called instead for a World War II museum in Gdansk, formerly Danzig, where war broke out in 1939. According to German estimates, some 15 million German speakers were expelled from their homes in the aftermath of the war. Up to 2 million are thought to have died as a result of the expulsions.
