Menachem RosensaftThe World Jewish Congress has failed to back its general counsel Menachem Rosensaft after he called for the international Jewish community to boycott Poland until it adopts a law on the restitution of Jewish property.
WJC secretary general, Michael Schneider, said in a statement Thursday that, “Although Mr. Rosensaft is the general counsel of the World Jewish Congress his statements on the issue were made in a personal capacity and not on behalf of the WJC. At no point has the WJC proposed a boycott of Poland, nor have we considered or discussed any such measures.”
The statement, however, recalls what WJC President Ronald S. Lauder has already said on the restitution problem.
"This issue has been under discussion in Poland for almost two decades, through many economic periods, including the present one when Poland is experiencing some of the strongest economic growth in the European Union.
“It is unacceptable that Poland cannot find some way to meet its responsibility to former landowners. 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.” (kk/pg)
related article
Call for compromise, thenews.pl, 31 March
Calls for compromise in Jewish restitution row
31.03.2011 13:10Menachem Rosensaft
Minister Sikorski; photo - PAPThe announcement of Prime Minister Tusk earlier this month that Poland is stalling further waves to those seeking compensation for dispossessed property – regarding claimants of all religious denominations – provoked a war of words, uniting pressure groups in several countries.
PM Tusk said that payments of billions of zloty owed to those who lost property during German Nazi occupation and the Communist regime that followed WW II would have to wait due to the “global financial crisis”.
When American lawmakers criticised the move, Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski argued that as of 1960, Poland has paid 40 million dollars (current value 300 million zloty) to the United States with regards to dispossessed landowners, and that subsequent American claims should be handled individually in the law courts.
Earlier this week, Menachem Rosensaft, an American legal expert and the president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, argued that the 1960 deal was only a partial solution to the problem.
His concluding assertion, that the Jewish community “should stop injecting tourist and other dollars into the Polish economy,” prompted a wave of controversy when it was republished on the web site of the World Jewish Congress.
“In spite of the fact that Sikorski was technically correct, he [the minister] got a little carried away,” said Professor Bohdan Szklarski, a specialist in American matters at Warsaw's Collegium Civitas, told the Rzeczpospolita daily.
“The Jewish question is a delicate topic,” he said.
“You have to think before you say anything, because there are also radicals in American Jewish organizations, and they react very intensely to such statements.”
Sikorski, whose wife Anne Applebaum is a distinguished American Jewish historian, had remarked that the U.S. had missed a crucial chance to help resolve the issue.
“If the United States would have wanted to help Polish Jews, a good moment for that would have been 1943-44, when the majority of them were still alive, and Poland was pleading for help through the voice of Jan Karski [ a courier of the Polish wartime underground ed.].”
Backtrack on boycott rhetoric
Menachem Rosensaft later declared that the Karski remark was “gratuitous”.
However, following the republication of his article on the World Jewish Congress web site, he has tried to play down his notion of suspending Jewish investment in Poland.
“I do not call for a boycott, because I do not believe in it,” he told the Rzeczpospolita daily after headlines in the Polish media claimed that he did in fact call for a boycott of Jewish tourism to Poland.
“However, if the Polish government tells Holocaust survivors and their descendants that it will not honour the promises it made over the last twenty years, then it will have to bear the consequences,” he added.
Dispossessed gentry
Speaking generally, Minister Sikorski has added that individual cases can be carried out in the courts.
'There is no distinction in the process of restitution. The courts do not know the religion or nationality.'
Nevertheless, whilst thousands of claimants of all denominations have been successful in their property claims since the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989, thousands remain outstanding.
Many properties were resold to a third party, without the original owner's consent. Likewise, many cases have stalled for years in the courts.
Somewhat sidelined in the overall debate has been the reaction of non-Jewish claimants in the ongoing affair. These include many members of the Polish gentry and other landowners, a good deal of whom, like so many Jewish counterparts, lived in emigration as a result of the communist take-over of Poland.
The Polish Landowners Association, which has offices around the globe, has responded to the halt of compensation 'with disapproval' but noted that it did not come as 'much of a surprise.'
In a statement, the association said that 'after twenty years of struggling' the claimants had 'lost the confidence in the will and competence of any political group' to achieve resolution in the matter.
Both the Polish Landowners Association and the World Jewish Congress have noted over the years that Poland is the only EU country not to have carried out satisfactory compensation in such matters.
However, a large section of public opinion continues to hold that the Polish losses during the war were exceptionally far-reaching, and that Poland should not be made to pay for the crimes of German Nazi occupiers and a puppet Communist government that was introduced by force. (nh/pg)
Source: Polskie Radio, Rzeczpospolita, The Jewish Week
