Warsaw – Poland refuses to provide restitution for Jewish property taken during World War II when the country was under Nazi control, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said over the weekend, explaining that such a move was akin to making Hitler victorious. Channel 13 reported.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
“If someone says that Poland is to pay any compensation to anyone, we say: we do not agree to it!” Morawiecki said on Friday in Lodz, according to the Polish news portal money.pl.
“If this terrible injustice will ever happen – when the executioner and victim roles were reversed – it would be Hitler’s posthumous victory,” he said.
The prime minister’s comment, one of a number he made over the weekend, was aimed at Congress’s new legislation: Act 447, the Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today (JUST) Act. It requires the US government to report on property lost by Jews in Europe due to the Holocaust.
But they stoked existing tensions between Jerusalem and Warsaw over the treatment of Jews in Poland during the Holocaust. Poland denies any culpability in the Nazi atrocities towards the Jews. The idea is offensive to them, because they also see themselves as victims of the Holocaust. And they view any restitution payments as a sign of culpability.
“Today, there are those in the world who have the nerve to ask compensation from Poland for German crimes. There is no agreement for such compensation and such behavior,” Morawiecki said in Krakow.
“For Europe, concretely, the area of historical memory and historical justice is also important. It is also a memory of Polish martyrs and victims. Here in Lesser [southeastern] Poland, Germans murdered and looted Poles in a unique way,” he added.
Israel has attempted to maintain its strong ties with the modern Polish state, while at the same time acknowledging the involvement of some Polish citizens in atrocities against Jews during World War II.
“The Polish leadership is again trying to distort history. It wants to thwart the justice that would come from returning the property of Holocaust survivors.
“Instead of solving the fundamental issues surrounding Holocaust remembrance once and for all, the Polish prime minister has once again chosen to create a provocation,” Edelstein said.
Poland recently canceled a planned meeting with an Israeli delegation upon learning that the question of compensation given to Jewish-Polish citizens who lost their assets during and after the Holocaust was on the meeting’s agenda.
Jewish assets were nationalized by the Polish state following the war, as were assets once held by German-speaking Poles, Ukrainian-speaking Poles and Polish people who attempted to resist the inclusion of the country in the Socialist bloc. Therefore, the question of compensation is a very complex one.
Many Poles view the focus on Jewish property lost during the Holocaust – as opposed to Polish property lost in what is modern Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania – as another example of how Jewish suffering is being treated differently than their own.
On Friday, former Polish foreign affairs minister Anna Fotyga was presenting her party’s views during a television debate when Konrad Berkowicz, of the Korwin Party, approached her from behind and placed a Jewish skullcap above her head as she was speaking, claiming she and her party are “kneeling in front of the Jews.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said in response that Korwin “is a small racist party and is not worthy of a reaction.”
‘hitler’y’ as this Pole says it, has already had his victory, by destroying Poland in a matter of days and twisting Polish brains with guilt and hate till this day. Poland remains a mentally backwards place, controlled by a backwards and corrupt rightist politics and a cynical psyche. Poland is a graveyard.
The Poles took plenty of Jewish property. There were Poles who helped the Nazis and there were Poles who waited for the Nazis to take the Jews so they could take over their property.
Read history books and vomit from the ‘pious’ Poles who aided and helped the Nazis and then enjoyed the Jew’s properties. Even when the few Jews returned from the camps after the war, the Poles told them get out or we will kill you…..
Many Jews believed the same after the holocaust and refused restitution money
That fellow ought to shut up.
What specific property is Israel asking? Land, houses, or what? While it belong to us before, is it really realistic to ask it back when we know they will not return it (maybe too much money for a relatively poor country)? Or what else is Israel asking for, that can be returned?
Jews groups should boycott going on the annual march for the Living event held ino Auschwitz-Birkenau.There are thousands of Jews involved, and the Polish economy takes in millions of dollars, because of that event. Why should we give money to those backstabbing momzarim, who all suffer from collective amnesia. The March for the Living event should be permanently cancelled, until the Poles change their attitude towards this matter.