Why no reprivatisation in Poland? Holocaust-era property ownership.

Awful times.

One thing that is often mentioned is that some people get property back and some don't. Basically property confiscated during the occupation was illegally seized whereas property nationalised just after the war wasn't. It does rankle with some.

A very close friend has got back bits of property taken from one side of his family who lost it under the occupation due to their ethnicity, however he doesn't have much hope of getting back property taken from the other side of his family after the Dekret Bieruta. An injustice? Yes, however to deny the claims of one group because another group's claims are invalid for different reasons is illogical.

"Confiscated" here too is not accurate, jon! "Confiscation" can be legal, as can search and seizure. What the Nazis did was neither; it was out and out plundering:-)

How would Austria, Germany or Switzerland be responsible for the actions of the Polish/Soviet government right after the war? They had no say whatsoever. If real estate was nationalized instead of being returned to the original Jewish owners or their heirs, it is the legal responsibility of Poland to pay restitution.

Yet, who put the Soviets in the uncompromising position of being enemies of the West in the first place?? Hitler hated the Communists because of the failed 1918 Bavarian Putsch, brought to you by Kurt Eisner,a Jew by the way:-) We both know that. Germans associated Communists with chaos, ergo Jews are Communists, Jews bring chaos and hence must be eliminated from the host body of the German State.

Polish Jews would doubtless have retained much of, if not the entirety of, their pre-War property/holdings etc. were it not for Hitler's "little war"LOL

Just remember "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Der Feind meines Feindes ist mein Freund.

So what's Poland's share, more or less... don't you think we need to know that If you want us to pay off the Holocaust.... ?

Yes. Plundering is a fair word.

Important to remember that we aren't talking about turfing poor people out of small houses here, this mostly involves commercial and investment properties and upscale real estate.

Grzegorz, I'd be happy if you didn't have to pay a single bloody złoty! I'm simply quoting what the Claims Conference folks are sayin':-)

Don't shoot the messenger.

OK so how much they want Poland to pay ?

Once more, I've really no idea whatsoever. Therefore, it's not even useful for us to speculate at this point.
Do you follow me? Zrozumiałeś?

So why do you bring up this issue ? If you have any claims to property in Poland, put together documents, hire a lawyer and go to court.

I was just wondering how much should Poland pay to pay off the Holocaust as you seems to be interested in this issue.

As far as l know all those issues had been sorted after the war.its Polish landowners haven't got back their property till now.

All those Jewish claims have no merit. Mostly some shady personas sniffing after monies.

...and others may well have had basis in some merit anyway. One bad apple spoils the (whole) batch, as we say:-)
Szkoda tym uczciwym ludziom!

By that logic, the UK and France would have to pay. They declared war on Germany, and not the other way around. Our Jewish friends should talk to the Frenchies and Poms then, don't you think? Especially since the Holocaust most likely wouldn't have happened the way it did, would France and Britain have refrained from meddling in Central Europe. Some sarcasm involved...

Hitler declared war on Europe, to be sure, on all mankind!!! Know your history? The Nazis marched into the Sudetenland, then into Poland, then into France, Norway, Denmark and the list keeps growing. What were the to-be Allies supposed to do, for pity's sake? Allow Hitler to simply march into their country??!

Get your facts straight, Lyzko. He annexed the Sudentenland and invaded Czechoslovakia after the weak Brits and French caved in at the Munich conference. When Germany and the USSR attacked Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany - not the other way round. Hitler wasn't interested in an armed conflict with the Brits.


A direct result of the declaration of war by the Brits and French, and by the way: the Brits would've invaded neutral Norway (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_R_4) if the Germans hadn't been faster. Know your history?


Don't know. Let the Germans and Russians go at each other's throat after they had carved up Poland? Fight the Nazis when they would actually attack Britain or France? Some Poles on here have even argued that a pact with Hitler would've been much better for the country than the "helping hand" of Britain and France during and immediately after the war. Your pick.

Everybody, please stick to the topic about post-war Holocaust-era property ownership in Poland

@Lyzko
What your rambling have to do with some people hoping to extort dough?
Poland paid all her dues to Jews - end off!

My "rambling" is merely setting the record straight about the facts, that's all, rather than paying lip service to irresponsible, bigoted revisionism!

Even the most cursory glance at the record indicates what happened. If the truth hurts and the record is a broken record, well, TOUGH!!!

Your apology of Soviet totalitarian regime has nothing to do with facts but rather all to do that you are an apologists of communist totalitarian regime which murdered more at least four times that many people than German national Marxists.

What all of it has do to with legal issues about restitution of privet property in Poland, I don't know, nobody sane and reasonable would.

Here facts for you to chew on:
all those polish citizen of Jewish ethnicity who returned to Poland after 1945 had their property returned to them, if they choose to sell it and leave foe the west or Palestine that was their choice.

Polish factory owners, landowners and even quite small shops and property have been striped without compensation form their property by Soviet stooges acting as Polish government, I guess it included few rich Jews in that number.

So far none of those (mainly landowners) haven't got their properties back, why would few Jews being made an exception? If property is going to be returned to the rightful owner then yes, it should include also Jewish owners, if not - nobody should get a dime!

You seems to be entertaining myth that there is bucked-loads of unresolved climes or unreturned property - that is a myth, Polish Jews were considerably poor, at least majority of them and to stress it against, their houses, flats or whatnot have been given back to those who returned and claimed it.

end -off!

As usual, Ironside, I see you misunderstood my post! I'm scarcely apologizing for any totalitarian regime. I'm only saying that the return of Holocaust-era property to either Jews or gentiles has become a sticky point, since it has long since become a matter of passing the buck, i.e. the ruble; the Nazis blamed the Jews, the Communists blamed the (former) Nazis and everyone's finger is pointed at the wrong party instead of turning said finger back towards themselves!! No Nazis, thus, no Holocaust, ergo no Communist Party takevover, hence no issue at all of returning "stolen" property to its rightful owner:-)

That's the matter before us.

Well, we have to wait until Poland regain her independence before any restitution of privet property to their rightful owners can take place. Claims by some Congresses of Jews representing nobody and focusing on alleged Jewish claims or invoicing some tribal laws do not help.

Mod, the above was only a reaction to Lyzko's absurd argument, that Germany should cover the cost for property that was confiscated and/or nationalized after the war because they attacked the USSR and lost. The Jewish organizations could as well ask Russia for restitution because the USSR invaded in 1939, too, or France and the UK because they were the ones which "officially" started WW2 by declaring war on Germany. The latter two arguments are equally absurd, but show the principle.


Flawed logic. You could as well say, no declaration of war by the UK and France, no WW2, no Holocaust.

...a declaration of war instigated by German aka Nazi aggression!!!!!

Let's do a little fact checking here, folks , mods et al., before we start bandying about words like "absurd", "flawed" etc., shall we?

:-)

Why did they feel the urge to meddle in Central Europe in the first place? Fight for freedom and democracy? Protect our way of living? You believe that? LMAO! It was never about Poland, because then they would've been obliged to declare war on the USSR, too. No, France and Britain were only worried that Nazi Germany would once again become a global competitor just like the German Empire had been a few years earlier. WW2 was not about democracy, but all about military power and global influence. Thank goodness that the Nazis were defeated, but it's also good that the Brits and French lost their empires after the war. Their meddling around the globe in the past is one of the main reasons for so many conflicts of today.

Hmmm, sense a little cynical revisionism afoot here:-)

Then again, it IS a free forum. Lest we confuse freedom of truth with dis-or misinformation!

Property confiscated (euphemistically nationalised?) by the puppet of an alien occupying power (USSR) cannot be legal, even though some paper-pushign bureaucrat claims it is.
It's too bad Free Poland did not deal wtih reprivatisation and lustration in the early days of its existence and start out with a clean slate. As a result of that negligence and unfinished business those issues will continue to haunt people a generation or more hence.

I think there were some issues such as communal flats - what would you do with all those people that moved from villages into city centres to change the demographics? And how could you deal with issues such as ZUS contributions suddenly being worth far less than people thought?

Maybe the Anglo-American version of history that you learned at school is only half-truth? :)

Sure it ain't vice-versa, old man? This blame-the-victim stuff's soundin' awful familiar:-) The reprivatisation question is hardly cut and dried. The Communists throughout Eastern Europe initially nationalized what was plundered by the Nazis, much later privatising property bearing at best questionable title.....and now almost seventy-five years after the fact, its original owner want it back. Seem surprising??

As far as TheOther's remarks, it's human nature to want to shift blame from the aggressor to the aggressee. Who wants to fess up to such embarrassing truths as those of the Shoah. So? Point the finger at the other guy; it wasn't the Nazis fault, it was the Jews fault. No, better still. It wasn't even the Germans' fault. No, it was the Innuits. Yeah, that's right, it was those damned Innuits!!!

Typical human defensive logic.

There were many issues but the fundamental ones were neglected. Reprivatisation and lustration belongg in that category.
Before Balzermann sunk his claws into the economy and began selling off Polish industry piecemeal for a song to foreign capital, that which could be returned should first have been returned to their rightful owners. Others should have been compensated finanvcially. That would have been the rule of law, unlike Balcerowicz's robber-baron tactics.