Region: Polish restitution plan dead

The Polish government is facing a barrage of criticism from the international and Jewish communities for its recent decision to suspend plans to compensate dispossessed Polish Jews for property seized during the Holocaust and subsequent communist era.

Poland's Treasury Ministry announced March 9 that "the current economic situation" had forced the government to shelve its 3-year-old plan to provide restitution payouts to Jews who had lost property between 1939 and 1989.

Stuart Eizenstat, special adviser for Holocaust issues to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, told reporters March 17 that while the U.S. understands the ministry's financial concerns, it questions whether the issue of restitution is a zero-sum game that needs to be abandoned entirely.

"Most other EU countries, where there is a similar [economic] problem, have passed laws providing restitution or compensation," he said. "And thanks to its good fiscal policies, Poland is in far better position than many other countries."

Eizenstat, who is a former U.S. ambassador to the European Union, added that the U.S. government wished to convince its Polish counterparts "through diplomatic channels" to reconsider its decision.

"We have a very close deep bilateral relationship, and we will hopefully use those close ties to try to deal with this."

But Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said Poland is not willing to negotiate, adding that the United States gave up its right to represent American citizens in restitution in an agreement signed by both countries in the 1960s.

U.S. intervention, he said, would have been more effective while the Holocaust was taking place.

"If the United States would have wanted to help Polish Jews, a good moment for that would have been 1943 or 1944, when the majority of them were still alive, and Poland was pleading for help," he said. "Such an intervention is now too late."

Jewish organizations from around the world have also slammed Poland's decision to abandon its restitution plans, reminding Polish leaders that Prime Minister Donald Tusk in 2008 promised "all Polish citizens" would receive restitution "whether they be ethnically Polish, Jewish, Ukrainian or German." Tusk has recently said Poland could no longer afford such a plan.

"Polish officials have been publicly stating for many years - too many years - that the property restitution and compensation issue would be addressed," said Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Organization. "[Now], Poland is telling many elderly prewar 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 a statement, Polish Treasury Minister Aleksander Grad said if Poland were to begin payouts next year, as is specified in legislation that has been considered by Parliament since 2008, "the public debt would grow by 18 billion złoty [$6.2 billion], and the ratio of public debt to gross domestic product would grow by some 1.0 to 1.1 percentage points."

Such a situation, the statement continued, "could make Poland exceed the public debt ceiling" required by the EU for countries wishing to join the eurozone, which has been a priority for Poland in recent years.

According to Lauder, most Central and East European countries with inferior economies have managed to adopt legislation "to provide for the restitution of or compensation for confiscated property," he said. "Poland stands out for its failure to do so."

The amount of dispossessed property totals about $35 billion, according to the Organization of Property Owners in Poland. About 17 percent of the 89,000 outstanding claims came from Jews. Before the Holocaust, about 3.5 million Jews lived in Poland, making it Europe's largest Jewish community.

A large amount of property was reclaimed following the collapse of communism in 1989, but other property was nationalized and is still owned by the state. The legislation Parliament had been drafting would have provided compensation for nearly 2 million current or former Polish citizens based on 20 percent of the property's current value.

Jack Buehrer can be reached at
jbuehrer@praguepost.com