Ronald S. Lauder, the head of the World Jewish Congress, has spoken out in reaction to Prime Minister Tusk’s declaration that “Poland cannot presently manage” to compensate any more citizens who lost property under the Nazis and Soviets.

“We are greatly disturbed by this turn of events as Polish officials have been publicly stating for many years – indeed too many years – that the property restitution and compensation issue would be addressed and legislation introduced in Parliament,” Lauder exclaims in a statement issued by the World Jewish Congress on Sunday.

The question relates to about 89,000 property claims, affecting numerous families. A large proportion of the claimants are Polish nobles and wealthy Polish Jewish families that were compelled to live abroad as a result of Nazi and Communist rule.

Although thousands of properties were successfully reclaimed after 1989, it was a far from uniform process.

“By its announcement this week,” Lauder continues in the statement, “Poland is telling many elderly pre-war landowners, including Holocaust survivors, that they have no foreseeable hope of even a small measure of justice for the assets that were seized from them.”

In 2008, Prime Minister Donald Tusk declared that Poland was not shirking the issue, and that a new bill was being drawn up.

The move came following suggestions that 20 percent of the current value of each property would be sufficient as a measure of compensation. Nevertheless, in 2008, that sum amounted to 48 billion US dollars.

Opponents of compensation claim that Poland should not be made to pay for the crimes of Hitler’s invading forces, likewise those of the Moscow-backed communist regime that followed. Until 1989, a government-in-exile continued to meet fortnightly in London, claiming to be the legitimate heirs to the pre-war legacy.

However, Lauder pointed out that “most central and eastern European countries have adopted some type of law to provide for the restitution of or compensation for confiscated property.”

“Poland stands out for its failure to do so.” (nh/jb)

Source: PAP/World Jewish Congress