Germany unveils memorial to Polish victims of World War II in Berlin

Germany on Monday unveiled a temporary memorial to the Polish victims of World War II, almost 86 years after Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime launched its bloody invasion of Poland.

"This memorial is necessary because we Germans are far too little aware of the disaster, pain and destruction that Germany brought upon Poland during World War II," said former foreign minister Heiko Maas at a ceremony in Berlin.

The commemorative stone is located near the Chancellery in the centre of the German capital, and should signal that "Poland is important for us," said Maas, the president of the German Poland Institute. "We are aware of our guilt and accept our responsibility."

According to the German government, more than 5 million Polish citizens were killed between 1939 and 1945, including around 3 million Jewish people.

The temporary memorial is set to be replaced by a permanent monument and the establishment of a German-Polish House in Berlin, which requires a vote in the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament.

Discussions over the appropriate site for the planned memorial have been ongoing for years. Former culture minister Claudia Roth highlighted the site of the former Kroll Opera House in central Berlin, where Hitler announced the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939.

Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner said: "Today we are closing an important gap in our country's culture of remembrance, but also in Berlin's culture of remembrance."

Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer said the memorial stone also symbolizes the weight of history.

Its inscription in German and Polish is "in a sense an oath," Weimer said. "The suffering of Poles that originated on German soil should never be forgotten."