Last update - 00:00 06/02/2007
Holocaust survivors to press Poland for compensation
By Reuters
WARSAW - Holocaust survivors from around the world will gather in Warsaw this month to urge the Polish government to compensate them for property confiscated by the former communist regime, Jewish organizations said Monday.
Poland, the biggest post-communist European Union member, is the only country from eastern Europe, besides Belarus, that has not enacted a program for the restitution of property seized after World War II. Attempts to solve the issue since the collapse of communism in 1989 have failed, mostly on the grounds that it would be too costly for the state budget.
Representatives of Jewish groups will gather here on February 27, hoping to convince the authorities to speed up legislation allowing the restitution of lost property.
Poland had Europe's biggest Jewish community until World War II, when the Nazis killed nearly 90 percent of the country's 3.3 million Jews. The post-war communist rulers seized their property as well as that of people who left or fled the country.
Naphtali Lavie, from the World Jewish Restitution Organisation, told Reuters he expected the government to take immediate action to resolve the issue. "Many of the people who lost their goods are very old today," he said by telephone from Jerusalem. "How long are they supposed to wait?"
Poland's ruling conservatives promised to resolve the issue and pass relevant legislation in coming months. But the government proposal envisages compensation for only 15 percent of the property lost. Polish officials estimate total claims for pre-war real estate and other property amount to at least $20 billion.
For many Holocaust survivors, 15 percent is not enough.
"How can you give someone back only a part of a house he lived in," Lavie said. "I would not call this a compromise ... it is depriving people of their property and parts of their lives," he said.