In November 1965, during the final days of the Second Vatican Council, a document was drafted in Rome that would soon reverberate in Warsaw, Bonn, East Berlin and Rome. It took the form of a seventeen-page typewritten letter in German. At the foot of each page appeared the signatures of all the Polish bishops, among them Primate Stefan Wyszyński and Archbishop Karol Wojtyła. The first page bore the title “Message of the Polish Bishops to Their German Brothers in Christ’s Pastoral Office”. The document was dated 18 November 1965. Formally known by this title, it is more commonly referred to as the “Letter of the Polish Bishops to the German Bishops”.

Behind this seemingly simple fact lay a dense web of political, ecclesiastical and biographical circumstances. To understand how the letter came into being, we must go back at least twenty years: to the Yalta Conference, the end of the Second World War and the emergence of the Cold War order in Europe.

Yalta and the Post-war Displacements

On 11 February 1945, the Yalta Conference came to an end. Under the agreements reached by the Big Three, Poland’s borders were shifted far to the west. A new political geography emerged. Large parts of the former German territories of Silesia and Pomerania, together with the southern part of East Prussia, were incorporated into Poland. At the same time, Poland lost its eastern territories to the Soviet Union.

Between 1945 and 1950, millions of Germans fled or were expelled from these territories. In Poland, memories of occupation, terror, mass executions and destruction remained vivid. In Germany, particularly among former inhabitants of the “eastern provinces”, memories centred on the loss of their homes and forced resettlement. For decades, these two experiences existed side by side, often without contact or mutual understanding.

At the same time, a new political relationship was taking shape. In 1950, Poland and the German Democratic Republic signed the Zgorzelec Treaty. Under the treaty, the GDR, acting under Soviet pressure, recognised the Oder–Neisse line as Poland’s western border. Communist propaganda celebrated it as the “border of peace”. The Federal Republic of Germany, by contrast, continued for many years to invoke Germany’s 1937 borders. It did not formally accept the territorial status quo along the Oder–Neisse line until the 1970 Treaty of Warsaw, following prolonged domestic debate.

The ecclesiastical consequences were tangible. After 1945, the new frontier disrupted the pre-war diocesan structures in the territories east of the Oder. In the territories officially known as the “Recovered Territories”, ecclesiastical administration was initially provisional. The absence of a final border settlement also delayed decisions by the Holy See on the permanent reorganisation of the dioceses.

Between the Millennium and the Council

In 1956, Primate Stefan Wyszyński conceived a nationwide programme of pastoral renewal in preparation for the Millennium of the Baptism of Poland. The Great Novena began the following year and continued until 1966. The year 1966 marked both the Church’s celebration of the Millennium of the Baptism of Poland and the communist state’s rival commemoration of a thousand years of Polish statehood. Meanwhile, from 1962, the Second Vatican Council met in Rome. Its successive sessions brought together bishops from across the world, including representatives of the Church in Poland and bishops from dioceses in both German states.

The Council provided a unique setting for the correspondence that followed. Its deliberations, later expressed particularly clearly in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et spes, emphasised the Church’s engagement with contemporary affairs and its commitment to peace and reconciliation. Beyond the formal proceedings, the Council also allowed Polish and German bishops, divided by the Iron Curtain, to speak directly for the first time in many years, without the mediation of governments or diplomats.

In West Germany, questions of guilt and responsibility were discussed with growing frequency, although initially within relatively limited circles. In 1961, a group of prominent Protestant intellectuals signed the Tübingen Memorandum, which called for West German recognition of the Oder–Neisse line. On 1 October 1965, the Protestant Church in Germany published the memorandum commonly known as the Ostdenkschrift, formally entitled “On the Situation of the Expellees and the Relationship of the German People to Its Eastern Neighbours”. It considered both the crimes of Nazi Germany’s war of annihilation and the later suffering of Germans through flight and expulsion, and appealed for reconciliation with Poland. The memorandum became one of the influences behind the Polish bishops’ own initiative.

Archbishop Kominek and the Letter to the German Bishops

Against this background, during the Council’s final session in 1965, the idea of a dedicated letter to the German bishops took shape in Rome. It would combine an invitation to the Millennium celebrations with a broader account of a thousand years of shared history. The driving force behind the initiative was Archbishop Bolesław Kominek, apostolic administrator of Wrocław. Born in Silesia, he had attended a German-language primary school and spoke German fluently. During the occupation, Kominek probably served as a Home Army chaplain during the final months of the war. After 1945, he served first as apostolic administrator of Opole and later headed the Church administration in Wrocław.

Kominek prepared the principal draft in German. By November 1965, the typescript of the Message was complete. The seventeen-page document, dated 18 November 1965, was signed by all the Polish bishops then in Rome. The signatories included Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, Archbishop Karol Wojtyła and Archbishop Bolesław Kominek, together with diocesan and auxiliary bishops from across Poland.

The Message comprises several sections. First, the bishops survey the history of Polish-German relations: Mieszko I’s baptism and Poland’s integration into Latin Christendom, medieval relations between the two peoples, St Hedwig of Silesia and the ecclesiastical links between Gniezno and Wrocław. They then turn to the partitions, annexations and successive phases of German eastward expansion. Next, they recall the experience of the Second World War: the occupation of Poland, crimes committed by Nazi Germany and the deaths of approximately 5.7 million Polish citizens, including almost three million Jews. Finally, they address the post-war settlement: the new Oder–Neisse frontier, the flight and expulsion of the German population and the insecurity felt by people living in Poland’s western territories over the permanence of the new order.

During the Council, the Message was delivered to the German bishops. It addressed them collectively as “German brothers in Christ’s pastoral office”, without distinguishing between bishops in West and East Germany. One surviving copy, now held in the Historical Archive of the Archdiocese of Cologne, bears the archive stamp on its cover. The pages that follow carry the handwritten signatures of the Polish bishops.

Before the Message was sent, Archbishop Kominek gave a copy to Ignacy Krasicki, a Polish journalist based in Rome who maintained close links with the communist authorities. Kominek hoped that Krasicki would inform Warsaw of the initiative and help him gauge the government’s likely response. According to later accounts, however, Krasicki presented the document to Władysław Gomułka as material obtained covertly rather than as an open approach from Kominek. This may have reinforced the authorities’ suspicion that the bishops were attempting to conduct foreign policy independently of the state. Their eventual response proved markedly hostile.

The Propaganda Campaign in Poland

After the communist authorities learned of the Message in late 1965, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) examined its contents. On 8 December 1965, it ordered a propaganda campaign portraying the bishops’ initiative as politically harmful. Preparatory party documents characterised the bishops’ stance as “anti-national” and “anti-socialist”, and as favourable to West German revisionism. The authorities sought to condemn the episcopate, discredit the Church leadership, accuse the bishops of falsifying history and drive a wedge between the hierarchy and the lower clergy.

A sweeping propaganda campaign followed. On 5 March 1966, Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz issued an open letter entitled “To the Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church”, which was widely reprinted in the press. In it, he insisted that no episcopal document could “erase” Nazi war crimes or crimes against humanity, asserted that Poles bore no guilt towards Germans and denounced the request for forgiveness as an affront to national dignity. The press adopted the same line. It concentrated almost entirely on a single sentence near the end of the Message, “We forgive and ask for forgiveness”. In doing so, it ignored both the historical argument that preceded the sentence and the bishops’ defence of Poland’s western border.

At workplaces, schools and universities, meetings and rallies were organised at which extracts from the Message and Cyrankiewicz’s letter were read aloud, and signatures were collected in support of condemnatory resolutions. The slogan “We do not forgive!” was coined and placed above collective letters published in the press. Some were addressed to Primate Wyszyński, while others targeted individual bishops. One such open letter came from employees of the Solvay Soda Works in Kraków. They expressed their “deep disappointment” at what they called Archbishop Karol Wojtyła’s “conduct unbecoming a citizen”. For Wojtyła, the attack had a personal resonance: during the German occupation, he had worked at Solvay for almost four years, first in the quarry and later in the boiler room.

On 24 December 1965, Archbishop Wojtyła replied at length to the open letter from the Solvay workers. He recalled his own wartime years at the factory and explained that the Message had been wrenched from its wider historical and pastoral context. He argued that its critics had not read the document in full and had disregarded the German bishops’ reply. The press did not publish his response; instead, it was sent to every parish in the Archdiocese of Kraków, with a request that it be read to the faithful.

As tensions mounted, on 10 February 1966, the Polish episcopate issued a pastoral statement explaining the purpose of the Millennium letters and seeking to temper the controversy. On 3 May 1966, at the height of the Millennium celebrations in Częstochowa, Primate Wyszyński called on the faithful to forgive those nations that had wronged the Polish people. The assembled crowds answered: “We forgive!” Despite sustained pressure from the authorities, the bishops thus reaffirmed the meaning of their 1965 gesture.

The German Bishops’ Reply

Meanwhile, the German bishops prepared their reply under considerable time pressure. Cardinal Alfred Bengsch, Bishop of Berlin, and Bishop Gerhard Schaffran of Görlitz drafted the text. The final version was dated 5 December 1965. The official German text is generally known as the “Reply of the German Bishops to the Polish Bishops”. A Polish translation was also produced. It bore the longer title “Greeting from the German Bishops to Their Polish Brothers in the Episcopate and Reply to the Letter of 18 November 1965”.

The reply was signed by 42 German cardinals and bishops, including prelates from dioceses in both German states. The signatories thanked the Polish bishops for their initiative, welcomed their readiness for dialogue and emphasised Poland’s thousand-year place within Latin Christendom. They acknowledged that Germany had begun the war and that terrible wrongs had been inflicted on the Polish people by Germans and in the name of the German nation. They also recognised the enduring wound left by the occupation and Poland’s immense losses. At the same time, they expressed gratitude that the Polish bishops had remembered Germans who resisted Nazism, clergy and laypeople who suffered imprisonment or death and the millions of expellees and refugees.

The reply also states, “we ask you to forgive”, and explains that a request for forgiveness is an appeal to those who have suffered injustice to view it through God’s merciful eyes and “allow a new beginning”. In its discussion of the post-war territorial settlement, the reply describes the new beginning as burdened by the bitter consequences of a war begun and lost by Germany. At the same time, it refers to the expellees’ “right to a homeland”, while stressing that, with few exceptions, this claim did not imply aggressive intentions. 

Reactions in Germany were mixed. Much of the West German press responded favourably to the Polish bishops’ initiative, although the exchange also provoked criticism. Subsequent assessments often judged the German bishops’ reply excessively cautious, particularly because it avoided unequivocal recognition of the Oder–Neisse line. In March 1968, reform-minded German Catholics associated with the Bensberg Circle issued a more forthright memorandum, which called for recognition of the Oder–Neisse line. 

In East Germany, the circulation and presentation of both documents were tightly controlled. The SED press depicted the exchange as a political intervention and attacked the bishops who had signed the reply. It accused the East German signatories of endorsing Bonn’s “revanchist” eastern policy and disregarding the GDR’s officially proclaimed friendship with Poland and its recognition of the border. The Polish communist authorities likewise regarded the correspondence as an attempt by Church leaders to enter a sphere the state claimed as its exclusive preserve: foreign policy. They opposed it accordingly.

From Correspondence to Treaty

Although the bishops’ correspondence of 1965 was concerned primarily with the moral and religious dimensions of Polish-German relations, in subsequent years, it became an important point of reference in broader political developments. In March 1968, German Catholics associated with the Bensberg Circle published A Memorandum by German Catholics on Polish-German Questions, which called unequivocally for recognition of the Oder–Neisse line. Its signatories included prominent theologians and intellectuals, among them Joseph Ratzinger. 

On 7 December 1970, in Warsaw, Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt and Polish Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz, together with Foreign Ministers Walter Scheel and Stefan Jędrychowski, signed the Treaty of Warsaw. Under the treaty, the Federal Republic of Germany accepted the existing Oder–Neisse line as Poland’s western frontier. On 17 May 1972, the Bundestag approved the ratification legislation; the treaty entered into force on 3 June. On 28 June 1972, the Holy See issued the apostolic constitution Episcoporum Poloniae coetus, which replaced the provisional Church administrations in Poland’s Western and Northern Territories with a permanent diocesan structure.

Two Letters: Different Memories

The asymmetry is revealing. Addressed to German bishops, the Polish Message sought to present Poland’s history in terms that its German readers could understand. The German reply, addressed to the Polish bishops, sought a language in which guilt, memory and borders could be discussed in terms that its Polish recipients might accept. Together, the two texts form a kind of linguistic bridge: each was written with another nation in mind, yet remained firmly rooted in its authors’ own historical perspective.

From a later historical perspective, the Polish Message made several remarkably bold gestures. First, it departed from the communist regime’s prevailing narrative of “eternal German hostility”. It emphasised periods of peaceful coexistence and good neighbourly relations, and acknowledged German contributions to Polish culture, law and economic life, without minimising German aggression or relativising the crimes committed against Poland.

Second, the Polish bishops acknowledged that Germans had included not only perpetrators but also victims of the Nazi regime. They cited members of the anti-Nazi resistance and Germans imprisoned in concentration camps. They also broke the silence surrounding Germans who had fled or been expelled from the territories transferred to Poland after the war. In communist Poland, such statements bordered on heresy within the state-sanctioned politics of memory.

Third, the Message implicitly but unmistakably linked reconciliation to the Oder–Neisse line. It presented the stability of the border as essential to the security and peace of mind of the Polish population in the “Recovered Territories”. In theological terms, this was an appeal for peace; in political terms, it was a discreet but firm call for moral acceptance of the post-war territorial settlement.

The German reply, signed by 42 German cardinals and bishops, was markedly more cautious. It expressed gratitude for the Polish bishops’ gesture, welcomed their account of Poland’s place within Latin Christendom and acknowledged Germany’s responsibility for the crimes of the Second World War. It also declared: “We too ask you to forget; indeed, we ask you to forgive. Forgetting is a human matter.” It described the plea for forgiveness as an appeal to those wronged to view injustice through God’s merciful eyes and allow a new beginning.

On the other hand, the German bishops continued to invoke the expellees’ “right to a homeland” and stopped short of offering unequivocal moral support for the Oder–Neisse line. The letter thus sought to balance an acknowledgement of guilt against concern about disrupting the fragile consensus within 1960s West German society, where public memory of expulsion often overshadowed the occupation of Poland.

We Do Not Forgive!

In Poland, the communist authorities reacted swiftly and dramatically. In December 1965, the directives of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) called for the Message to be condemned as “anti-national” and “anti-socialist”, and as encouraging West German revisionism. The campaign was to discredit the Church leadership, accuse the bishops of falsifying national history and drive a wedge between the hierarchy and the “healthy” lower clergy. The propaganda machine soon moved into full operation.

The slogan “We do not forgive!” was coined and repeated day after day in the state-controlled press, alongside harrowing accounts of the German occupation. Meetings and rallies were organised at workplaces, schools and universities. At the Solvay Soda Works, former colleagues of Karol Wojtyła were mobilised against the archbishop, who had worked there as a labourer during the German occupation. The authorities inspired “letters of indignation” addressed to the Primate’s curia and individual bishops. Many such initiatives were orchestrated by party officials. Yet not all opposition was manufactured: for many Poles, whose memories of German atrocities remained vivid, it was emotionally too soon to speak of forgiveness.

The paradox was that the propaganda focused almost exclusively on a single sentence: “We forgive and ask for forgiveness”. It was removed from the context of a seventeen-page document that described German crimes, emphasised Polish suffering and defended Poland’s rights to its western territories. A theological formula whose force was both dramatic and evangelical was reduced to a slogan that could easily be ridiculed.

In West Germany, reactions were different but no less ambivalent. Much of the press praised the Polish bishops’ openness to dialogue, while criticising their interpretation of Polish-German history as excessively Polonocentric. In retrospect, the German bishops’ reply has itself been criticised as excessively cautious: it offered no unequivocal recognition of the border and did little to confront prevailing German attitudes towards Poland. The reply had already caused disappointment among the Polish bishops in 1965.

In East Germany, the authorities restricted public discussion of the correspondence. At the same time, the state-controlled press accused Bishops Alfred Bengsch and Gerhard Schaffran of promoting border revisionism and participating in Vatican “ideological diversion”. Within official socialist doctrine, reconciliation belonged to the sphere of party and state policy; the Church was permitted to speak, at most, about private morality.

Thus emerged the complex legacy of the two letters. Intended by the Polish and German bishops as a catalyst for reconciliation, they immediately became the subject of political conflict and an instrument of propaganda. Only with the passage of time did they come to be recognised as archival testimony to the courage, but also the limitations, of both sides.

Between the “Volksgemeinschaft” and the Gospel

To understand the caution of the German reply fully, we must remember that it emerged from a Church still engaged in a contested and incomplete reckoning with its conduct during the Nazi era. Studies of German Catholics between 1939 and 1945 show that many were enmeshed in the logic of the “national community” (Volksgemeinschaft), even as they sought to preserve the distinctiveness of the Catholic “milieu”. The Church was not a monolithic centre of resistance to Nazism. It was instead a field of competing loyalties, accommodation, limited conflict and selective opposition. 

In this setting, asking the Polish bishops for forgiveness was a courageous but incomplete step. Polish suffering was still only partially integrated into West German public memory, even as the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial prompted a broader reckoning with Nazi crimes. The German bishops also had to reckon with the political influence and emotional world of the expellees, for whom the loss of the Heimat remained a defining experience. Hence the reply’s ambiguity: its language of forgiveness was theologically clear, but its treatment of the border and the expellees’ “right to a homeland” remained poised between the demands of the Gospel and the logic of national interest. 

By contrast, in 1965, the Polish bishops faced a very different set of tensions: the trauma of occupation, a society shaped by anti-German rhetoric and the conviction that only a moral gesture made ahead of diplomacy could open the way to genuine normalisation. Their letter was both an act of faith and an exercise in “border realism”. Reconciliation was not an abstract ideal but a process rooted in a concrete dispute over the frontier, the recognition of Wrocław and Kołobrzeg as Polish cities and the canonical status of dioceses in former German territories. The Message itself was intended to provide a clear moral point of reference for that process. 

In this sense, both documents testify to the Churches’ dual identity: they were rooted in national communities yet belonged to a universal Church. The correspondence did not resolve the tension between these dimensions; instead, it exposed it. Precisely as ambiguous texts, marked by internal fissures, the letters acquire particular value as Polonica. They preserve traces not only of Polish memory in German archives but also of the limits of German engagement with Polish history.

From Correspondence to Declarations

Over the ensuing decades, the exchange became part of the German Bishops’ Conference’s institutional culture of remembrance.

On the thirtieth anniversary of the correspondence, in 1995, the Polish and German Bishops’ Conferences issued the joint declaration Przekazywać dalej dar pojednania / Das Geschenk der Versöhnung weitergeben (“Passing on the Gift of Reconciliation”). Ten years later, they issued Pojednanie i przyjaźń ‒ spojrzenie w przyszłość Europy / Versöhnung und Freundschaft - Blick auf Europas Zukunft (“Reconciliation and Friendship: Looking towards Europe’s Future”). Both declarations drew directly on the 1965 letters. They treated the exchange not as a closed chapter but as an enduring point of reference for a European culture of reconciliation.

In 2025, the German Bishops’ Conference marked the sixtieth anniversary with a series of commemorative events. These included the Berlin symposium 60 Jahre ‚Wir vergeben und bitten um Vergebung‘ - ein Auftrag für die Zukunft? (“Sixty Years of ‘We Forgive and Ask for Forgiveness’: A Task for the Future?”), held on 11 September. The event was organised with the Catholic Academy in Berlin and the Krzyżowa Foundation for Mutual Understanding in Europe. It reconsidered the letters’ significance amid renewed tensions and war in Europe.

On 18 November 2025, in Wrocław, Polish and German bishops laid wreaths at the monument to Cardinal Kominek, celebrated Mass in Wrocław Cathedral and signed a joint statement entitled “The Courage of Outstretched Hands”. The commemoration no longer unfolded in the shadow of Yalta or the “border of peace”, but in a Europe once again confronted by war to Poland’s east. Questions of memory, borders and responsibility had acquired renewed urgency.

Letters as Polonica

From the perspective of research into Polonica, the two letters differ from more familiar objects of study, such as churches, monuments, tombstones and paintings. They are “movable” in two senses. First, literally: as archival documents, they have travelled and now survive in several repositories. Second, symbolically: they are speech acts whose performative force is renewed whenever they are read. For historians, they bear witness to their age; for theologians, they embody the teaching of the Second Vatican Council on a Church engaged with the world. For political scientists, they foreshadow the Treaty of Warsaw and subsequent instruments of Ostpolitik; for today’s readers, they offer the unsettling prospect of moving beyond inherited national perspectives.

As Polonica, they possess another distinctive quality. They show that Polish heritage abroad is not merely the sum of “Polish things” dispersed across the world. It is also a network of relationships connecting Polish documents, symbols and texts with institutions in other countries. The Message forms part of a shared heritage. It is indispensable to any history of post-war Poland, but it also belongs to the history of German Catholicism and the evolution of the German Bishops’ Conference. It also forms part of the history of the West German Church’s gradual reckoning with the Nazi past.

The two letters of 1965 are Polonica of a special kind: not only because physical copies are preserved in German archives, but above all because the documents continue to shape Polish-German memory. Over time, they ceased to be merely Church documents and became fundamental points of reference for understanding reconciliation as a process that demands courage, a readiness for self-criticism and the abandonment of comforting national myths.

The Letters

Historical Archive of the Archdiocese of Cologne: AEK, CR III 352 (R 32048/65); digitised copy available in the JP2online collection.

Message of the Polish Bishops to Their German Brothers in Christ’s Pastoral Office, 18 November 1965:

(download PDF file)

Greeting from the German Bishops to Their Polish Brothers in the Episcopate and Reply to the Letter of 18 November 1965, 5 December 1965: 
(download PDF file) 

Timeline

A timeline of the correspondence between the Polish and German bishops and its reception 
(based on the documents and studies cited)

11 February 1945 
The Yalta Conference ends. The Allied leaders agree that Poland’s eastern frontier should broadly follow the Curzon Line and that Poland should receive substantial territorial gains in the north and west. The precise western frontier remains to be settled later.

1945–1950 
Millions of Germans flee or are expelled from the former eastern territories of the Reich transferred to Polish administration. In Poland, memories of the occupation and German crimes remain vivid.

6 July 1950 
Poland and the German Democratic Republic sign the Zgorzelec Agreement, formally titled the Agreement Concerning the Demarcation of the Established and Existing Polish-German State Frontier. Under pressure from the USSR, the GDR recognises the Oder–Neisse line, celebrated in official propaganda as the “border of peace”. Critics of this line are threatened to be stigmatised as “hostile to peace” and “fascist”.

1958 
Lothar Kreyssig establishes Aktion Sühnezeichen (Action Reconciliation), an ecumenically oriented initiative founded by German Protestants. Its activities in Poland were favourably received from an early stage by circles associated with Tygodnik Powszechny and Więź, as well as by bishops, including Karol Wojtyła.

1956–1966 
Under Primate Stefan Wyszyński, preparations take shape for the Millennium of the Baptism of Poland (Sacrum Poloniae Millennium). The Jasna Góra Vows are proclaimed in 1956; the nine-year Great Novena begins on 3 May 1957 and culminates in the Millennium celebrations of 1966.

1961
Eight prominent Protestant academics and public figures sign the Tübingen Memorandum. It opposes West German nuclear armament and calls for recognition of the Oder–Neisse line. Initially circulated privately among members of the Bundestag, it is published publicly in February 1962. 

1962–1965
The Second Vatican Council meets in Rome. Polish bishops encounter bishops from dioceses in both German states. The Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes, promulgated on 7 December 1965, emphasises the Church’s engagement with the modern world and the pursuit of peace. Cardinal Wyszyński and Archbishop Wojtyła make a contribution to its drafting. 

1 October 1965
The Protestant Church in Germany (EKD) publishes the memorandum “On the Situation of the Expellees and the Relationship of the German People to Its Eastern Neighbours, commonly known as the Ostdenkschrift. It links the criminal war of attrition unleashed by Germany to the post-war fate of the expelled Germans, and calls for reconciliation with Poland. 

18 November 1965
In Rome, the Polish bishops date their “Message to Their German Brothers in Christ’s Pastoral Office”. 

 

• Its principal author is Archbishop Bolesław Kominek, apostolic administrator of Wrocław.
• The seventeen-page typescript is written in German.
• It is signed by all the Polish bishops then in Rome, including Primate Stefan Wyszyński and Archbishop Karol Wojtyła.
• The Message surveys the history of Polish-German relations and addresses the German occupation, the post-war frontier and the fate of Germans who fled or were expelled.
• It concludes with the celebrated words: “We forgive and ask for forgiveness.”  

November 1965, before the Message is delivered
Archbishop Kominek gives a copy of the Message to Ignacy Krasicki, the Polish Press Agency’s correspondent in Rome, hoping to gauge the likely response of the communist authorities in Warsaw. According to later accounts, the initial signals appeared reassuring and gave no indication of the hostile reaction that would follow. 

5 December 1965
The German bishops issue their official reply, “Greeting from the German Bishops to Their Polish Brothers in the Episcopate and Reply to the Letter of 18 November 1965”.

• Archbishop Alfred Bengsch, Bishop of Berlin, and Gerhard Schaffran, Bishop of Görlitz, prepare the initial German draft. Other bishops revise it before its approval by the episcopal conference.
• A Polish translation is also produced.
• The reply is signed by 42 German cardinals and bishops, including prelates from dioceses in both German states.
• The German bishops thank their Polish counterparts, acknowledge the wrongs inflicted on Poland by Germany and ask for forgiveness. They also discuss the post-war frontier and the fate of German expellees. 

8 December 1965
The Politburo of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) approves guidelines for the state’s response to the Message. Preparatory party documents characterise the bishops’ position as “anti-national” and “anti-socialist”, and as encouraging West German revisionism. The authorities order a broad propaganda campaign against the Church leadership.

December 1965 – March 1966
A major post-war anti-Church propaganda campaign begins:

• Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz publishes an open letter in the press condemning the Message, particularly the formula “We forgive and ask for forgiveness”.
• Protest rallies are organised in workplaces, universities and public institutions under the slogan “We do not forgive!”.
• Numerous collective letters and press commentaries accuse the bishops of “betraying the national interest”.
• Dozens of indignant letters, some orchestrated by the authorities, are sent to bishops, including Primate Stefan Wyszyński and Archbishop Karol Wojtyła.

8 December 1965
The Second Vatican Council formally closes. The Polish Message and the German reply belong to its final phase and reflect the Council’s emphasis on dialogue, peace and reconciliation.

10 February 1966
The Polish episcopate issues a pastoral statement explaining the purpose of the Millennium correspondence and seeking to temper the controversy generated by the state propaganda campaign.

3 May 1966
During the central celebrations of the Millennium of the Baptism of Poland at Jasna Góra in Częstochowa, Primate Stefan Wyszyński calls on the faithful to forgive the nations that have wronged the Polish people, reaffirming the moral significance of the 1965 gesture. 

March 1968
Approximately 160 German Catholics associated with the Bensberg Circle publish “A Memorandum by German Catholics on Polish-German Questions”. It calls for West German recognition of the Oder–Neisse line and restitution for the wrongs inflicted on Poland. Its signatories include Joseph Ratzinger. 

7 December 1970
In Warsaw, Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt, Polish Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz and Foreign Ministers Walter Scheel and Stefan Jędrychowski sign the Treaty of Warsaw. The Federal Republic of Germany accepts the existing Oder–Neisse line as Poland’s western frontier and declares that it has no territorial claims against Poland. 

17 May 1972
The Bundestag approves the legislation authorising ratification of the Treaty of Warsaw. The treaty enters into force on 3 June, following the exchange of the instruments of ratification. The Holy See replaces the provisional Church administrations in Poland’s Western and Northern Territories with a permanent diocesan structure. 

13 December 1995
On the thirtieth anniversary of the correspondence, the Polish and German Bishops’ Conferences issue the joint declaration Das Geschenk der Versöhnung weitergeben / Przekazywać dalej dar pojednania (“Passing on the Gift of Reconciliation”). 

21 and 24 September 2005
On the fortieth anniversary, the two Bishops’ Conferences sign the declaration Versöhnung und Freundschaft - Blick auf Europas Zukunft / Pojednanie i przyjaźń - spojrzenie w przyszłość Europy (“Reconciliation and Friendship: Looking towards Europe’s Future”), first in Fulda and subsequently in Wrocław. 

3 December 2005
In Wrocław, a monument to Cardinal Bolesław Kominek is unveiled near the Church of Our Lady on the Sand. Its Polish and German inscriptions include the words: “We forgive and ask for forgiveness.” 

30 August – 1 September 2018
Cardinal Reinhard Marx, then President of the German Bishops’ Conference, visits Poland. In Poznań, he meets Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki, President of the Polish Bishops’ Conference, and takes part in discussions with Catholic academics and journalists. On 1 September, Cardinal Marx celebrates Mass to mark the anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, which began with Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939, and he recalls Poland’s suffering under German occupation and the subsequent journey towards reconciliation.

25–27 April 2023
The Polish-German Contact Group of the two Bishops’ Conferences meets in Augsburg. Established in the 1990s, the group works to deepen cooperation between the Churches and contribute to reconciliation between the two nations. 

11 September 2025
In Berlin, the symposium 60 Jahre ‚Wir vergeben und bitten um Vergebung‘ - ein Auftrag für die Zukunft? (“Sixty Years of “We Forgive and Ask for Forgiveness”: A Task for the Future”) examines the present and future of Polish-German relations. The German Bishops’ Conference organises the event with the Krzyżowa Foundation for Mutual Understanding in Europe and the Catholic Academy in Berlin. Participants, including bishops, diplomats, politicians and researchers, discuss the present state and future of Polish-German relations in the light of the 1965 Message.

18 November 2025
In Wrocław, Polish and German bishops commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the Message. The programme includes:

• a ceremony and wreath-laying at the monument to Cardinal Bolesław Kominek, with addresses by Archbishop Józef Kupny and Bishop Georg Bätzing
• Mass in the Cathedral of St John the Baptist, presided over by Archbishop Tadeusz Wojda, with a homily by Bishop Bätzing
• the signing of the joint statement “The Courage of Outstretched Hands” by the presidents of the two Bishops’ Conferences
• an evening Taizé prayer service in the Church of Our Lady on the Sand.