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The Polish coastguard has asked for the withdrawal of the centrepiece of an exhibition in Berlin about Europeans displaced, deported and expelled in the 20th century.
The object in question is the bell from the Wilhelm Gustloff, a passenger ship which was packed with 10,000 German refugees when it was sunk by a torpedo fired from a Soviet submarine in the Baltic Sea in January 1945.
Its sinking became a symbol of the plight of millions of Germans forced to flee the advance of the Red Army through eastern Europe after the downfall of the Nazis.
The bell belongs to the Polish coastguard which says it now wants it back by the middle of September and will donate it to a Polish museum.
Erika Steinbach, the head of the group representing expelled Germans which has organised the exhibition, said the attempt to reclaim the bell was the last move in a concerted Polish campaign to undermine the exhibition.
"There is a witchhunt in Poland against people and institutions who have provided exhibits," she said.
Poland has already succeeded in forcing the withdrawal of two exhibits, including a book which belonged to a German soldier which was lent to the show by a museum in Poland.
A spokesman for the Polish coastguard, Tomasz Sagan, told Germany's 3 Sat television that Poles felt "surprised and cheated" that the German government was allowing the exhibition to take place without the patronage of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Poland's conservative Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski has described the exhibition as an attempt to distort history by portraying Germans as the victims.
And the mayor of Warsaw, Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, who recently cancelled a trip to Berlin in protest at the exhibition, said he fears the exhibition is a step towards creating a permanent centre in Germany to document the plight of victims of expulsion.
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AFP 171723 GMT 08 06
COPYRIGHT 2006 Agence France-Presse. All rights reserved.
