Israel and the U.S. insist that Poland must pay for Germany’s World War 2 Crimes
Congress’s JUST Act, “Justice For Uncompensated Survivors Todayâ€, was signed into law by President Trump in 2017. It requires the U.S. State Department to issue an annual report that names the European countries that are – and are not – paying Jews and their heirs for property seized by the Nazi Germans and subsequent communist governments.
The reason these countries are expected to pay stems from a 2009 conference held in Terezin, Czech Republic, that was arranged in large part by the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO). As a side note, Terezin was called Theresienstadt by the Germans during the war and was the location of their concentration camp by the same name.
Forty-six countries, including Poland, sent representatives to the conference (called “The Holocaust-Era Assets Conferenceâ€) and the WJRO’s objective was to have them commit to enact special measures by which a country must pay surviving Jews and their heirs for family property seized by the Germans.
Directly after the conference, the “Terezin Declaration†was issued, which was a document that outlined measures by which Jews should be paid. Written in large part by the WJRO, the Declaration listed each of the 46 countries that attended and was meant to convey the impression that each country had committed to enact payment measures. This fallacy was further disseminated by media reports stating that each of the countries were “signatories†to the Declaration. Although the WJRO wanted uninformed readers to conclude that the Terezin Declaration was a legally binding document, the opposite is true. It is merely a public statement and is neither a treaty nor legally binding international agreement.
An important point to note is that Poland, represented by Władysław Bartoszewski, did not sign the Terezin Declaration. The reasons for this are straightforward. Poland had already begun restoring communal religious properties, such as synagogues, and secular communal properties, such as libraries. Individual private properties, such as dwellings, were in large part restored when appropriate proof of ownership was presented before a court of law. It should be noted that Bartoszewski was fully qualified to represent Poland and assess the requirements of the WJRO. He was a Polish politician, social activist, historian, Auschwitz concentration camp prisoner, Polish resistance fighter, recipient of Yad Vashem’s Righteous Among the Nations award, and honorary citizen of Israel. He also served twice as the Minister of Foreign Affairs and was a member of the Polish Senate.
As would be expected, Poland opposed the method of compensation requested by the WJRO for heirless properties. According to the WJRO, if a Jewish private property has no living heir, Poland is nonetheless expected to pay the equivalent value of that property to the WJRO. According to the Terezin Declaration, the WJRO will then transfer the money to “needy Holocaust (Shoah) survivors†and also use it for “ongoing education about the Holocaust (Shoah), its causes and consequences.â€
The issue is that the WJRO’s request contradicts the law and legal tradition in Poland, the U.S., and other western democracies. When a person dies and has no living heir, all property belonging to that person reverts to the state. Thus, the individual private property of a Polish Jew who died and has no heir, reverts to Poland. Moreover, neither Israel nor any external organization, such as the WJRO, can legally make a claim to the heirless property of a Polish citizen, in this case a Polish Jew, who has died.
Despite the pressure of the Biden Administration and the U.S. Senate, as well as the irrational and oftentimes visceral criticism of Israeli politicians, Poland has refused to yield. Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki replied to this nonsense by stating: “So long as I am prime minister, Poland will pay not a dollar, euro, or złoty for the German crimes.†His point is unmistakably clear: Poland is not responsible for the Holocaust.
As can be seen, the purpose of the JUST Act and the State Department’s annual reports are to shame Poland and other countries into paying the WJRO for heirless Jewish properties, despite the fact that doing so violates legal tradition established throughout the western world. As a result, Polish-Jewish relations continue to go downhill, this time by the invalid demands of Israeli functionaries. In addition, Polish-U.S. relations have been damaged by the Administration’s claim that Poland must pay the WJRO for heirless Polish Jewish properties.
