Poland on Thursday estimated the financial cost of World War II losses at 1.3 trillion euros (dollars) and said it would “ask Germany to negotiate those reparations.”

“It’s a large sum of 6.2 trillion” Polish zlotys, said Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the ruling Law and Justice party and widely regarded as Poland’s de facto leader.

Most of this sum “is compensation for the deaths of more than 5.2 million Polish citizens,” he stressed.

Kaczynski said that obtaining reparations was a “long and difficult” process.

“It is a decision that we will implement,” he said on the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939.

Kaczynski was speaking at a conference devoted to presenting a report on Poland’s losses in the 1939-1945 war.

Since Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party came to power in 2015, it has often campaigned on the issue of war reparations.

Work on the reparations report began in 2017 when the Conservative government insisted that Germany had a “moral obligation” on the matter.

Germany has often dismissed Poland’s claims, citing a 1953 decision by Poland to waive claims against East Germany.

The federal government rejected the Polish call for negotiations on reparations on Thursday.

“The position of the federal government remains unchanged, the reparations issue is closed,” a State Department spokesman told AFP in an email.

He cited the 1953 decision, calling it “an important foundation for the contemporary order of Europe.”

The liberal Polish opposition believes the report is mainly for domestic political purposes as it comes out a year ahead of parliamentary elections.

“The PiS initiative on war reparations has appeared for several years whenever the PiS needs to build a political narrative,” said Donald Tusk, chairman of the main opposition Civic Platform (PO).

“This is not about reparations from Germany, but about a political campaign” in Poland, he added, with Kaczynski trying “to rebuild support for the ruling party through this anti-German campaign.”

But Kaczynski insisted that the reparations report must be implemented.

“Not only have we made a report, we have also made a decision, a decision on how to proceed,” Kaczynski said.

“This action consists of asking Germany to negotiate these reparations. And this is a decision that we will implement,” he added.

“The Germans invaded Poland and caused us enormous damage. The occupation was incredibly criminal, incredibly cruel and had consequences that in many cases continue to this day.”

Aside from the total death toll, which is estimated at 5.3 million, the new report provides other shocking statistics, including that 2.1 million Polish citizens were deported to Nazi Germany to work.

590,000 Poles were disabled by forced pseudomedical experiments and imprisonment in concentration camps.

During the six-year World War, Poland lost 50 percent of its lawyers, 40 percent of its doctors and 35 percent of its university professors.

Human losses were calculated as the wage losses a person would have earned for the rest of their life and thus as a loss to national GDP.

Property damage was also estimated at 800 billion zlotys (170 billion euros).

The total also includes billions in losses in cultural and artistic assets and in the banking sector.