Duda was attending ceremonies in the western town that started at 04.40 on Sunday, exactly 85 years from when the first bombs of WWII fell.

He said Poland had forgiven the act’s perpetrators, though pain remains as there are still “hundreds of thousands of people who were personally harmed by the Germans.” “Forgiveness and the admission of guilt are one thing, and restitution for harm is another,” Duda said. “And that matter is still not settled and has never been settled.”

In September 2022, the Law and Justice government of the time produced a report detailing Poland’s wartime losses at German hands and declared that Poland should receive €1.3 trillion in reparations from Berlin.

“I deeply believe that it will be settled, because no one has given up expecting that if someone simply came and destroyed something they should give the same back or pay for it,” the president said.

He went on to point out that Poland would never be compensated for what it lost over 40 years of communist rule after the war as no one would ever calculate the costs, “but for those calculable losses we have suffered as a result of war and aggression, compensation is not only possible but is due," he said.

Duda likened Poland’s claim against Germany to the free world’s expectation that Russia pay reparations to Ukraine for the harm it has inflicted.

“If there is destruction there should be restitution,” Duda said.