Hamburg - The woman at the focus of a stand-off between Germany and Poland will not be nominated to the board of a new, taxpayer-funded museum, it was announced Wednesday.

Poland had protested at the nomination of Erika Steinbach, 65, national leader of a refugee group, to join a
13-member board to set up a Berlin museum depicting the ordeal of Germans expelled from eastern Europe after World War II.

The Federation of Expellees said it would not nominate Steinbach because it did not want to be accused of jeopardizing the museum project, which she initiated.

Poles regard Steinbach as a divisive figure intent on awakening old antipathies, and charge that Steinbach's parents were aggressors because they moved to Gdansk, Poland, after the Nazi takeover.

On Friday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel discussed the issue with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk at a meeting in Hamburg.

The refugee museum is to occupy one floor of a Berlin office building, near the expellees' office. It includes a library and documentation centre.

Steinbach is a federal deputy for Merkel's own Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which enjoys broad support from former expellees and their descendants.

Some 14 million Germans fled or were expelled from Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia during the final stages of the war and its aftermath. Some 2 million are estimated to have died or were killed.

Some Poles fear the new museum project would portray the Germans as victims of the war, rather that aggressors. (dpa)