In case you don't know, Poland recently made news here in the EU when it asked Germany to pay reparations for invading Poland during the Second World War. My question is, didn't Russia invade Poland too during WW2?
I am mostly concerned about whether Russian invasion & occupation was substantially different from German in regards to the loss of life/destruction of the economy?
P.S. I know about the Holocaust ofcourse, but I believe that's not the reason their are asking Germany to pay reparations for what Germany did to the jewish people, especially since Germany paid reparations to Israel, and Poland itself was pretty antiscemitic at the time.
There are a lot of points to consider, though. I'll give you a few. Germany sent in more than 3 times the amount of soldiers that the Soviets did. The Soviets liberated a lot of the camps that Polish POWs were being kept in, and they also liberated a lot of the labour camps where petty criminals were being kept. The most famous one probably being Auschwitz (I visited it this year and the Polish tour guide didn't omit this fact, and other tours I saw going on at the same time didn't seem to either. There was a lot of credit where it was deserved). In Europe in general there is much more bad feeling towards the Nazis than there is towards the Soviets. A This might help you as well https://www.quora.com/Did-Russia-ever-make-a-formal-apology-for-the-deaths-under-Communism