Germany: One of the last acts of the second World War, the confiscation of property and the expulsion of Germans from former eastern territories, could soon come before the European Court of Human Rights.
A group representing expelled Germans has announced plans to sue the Polish government for compensation and the recovery of property seized when German-Polish borders were redrawn in 1945.
The organisation, known as the Prussian Trust, announced yesterday it will bring its case in Polish courts and, if necessary, present 10 sample cases before the Strasbourg court. The announcement has caused outrage in Poland and will increase pressure on already strained relations between Berlin and Warsaw.
"We want to send a signal that a country that commits such human rights crimes can not just pretend nothing happened," said Mr Rudi Pawelka, chairman of the Prussian Trust, which says Poland's actions at the time and since violate EU human rights conventions.
Chancellor Schröder has said that he is opposed to private compensation claims that "stand history on its head". He said at a ceremony in Warsaw on Sunday marking the city's failed uprising of 1944 that Germany would "represent this position at every international court".
However, German officials have declined to elaborate on what action Berlin is prepared to take, with one official remarking that Berlin will "not get actively involved" in the matter.
"The government will bring its knowledge to the case but cannot act until it knows what sort of a case is involved," said a government spokesman yesterday. "These are redundant claims from a closed historical epoch."
The issue of the expelled, long a taboo in Germany, has only begun to be discussed openly after it served as material for the work of leading authors, including Nobel prize winner Günther Grass.
An estimated six million Germans were expelled after the second World War, mostly from present-day Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia, in an orgy of revenge-driven rape and murder.
One organisation, the Association of Expelled Germans (BdV), has called for a museum for expelled Germans in Berlin, a move that is opposed by the government.
Yesterday, Ms Erika Steinbach, a conservative MP and head of the BdV, criticised Mr Schröder's Warsaw speech as "indecent".
She has demanded the government pay compensation and draft a law resolving the issues surrounding the expelled, something rejected by Berlin as well as Mr Rudi Pawelka of the Prussian Trust.
"That would look as though the expelled are grasping for money," he said.
Mr Laurenz Meyer, the CDU party general secretary, also backed Mr Schröder's position.