Czech Jewish Community Disappointed by Veto of a Bill to Return Property

The Jewish community here has expressed disappointment over a recent decision by the governing coalition parties to reject a bill that would restore Jewish properties seized by the Nazis.

“The Jews are the only community in this country waiting in vain for justice,” Jiri Danicek, president of the Federation of Jewish Communities of the Czech Republic, said following the decision.

A proposed law for the return of Jewish properties had been prepared and approved in March 1992 by the government of the Czech Republic under the united Czechoslovakia.

According to the bill’s provisions, synagogue buildings, cemeteries, rabbis’ dwellings and other properties that formerly belonged to Jewish communities and organizations were to be returned to Czech Jewry as an act of justice and reconciliation.

But the proposed law was put aside after the defeat of the previous government in the June 1992 general elections.

The new coalition government led by Vaclav Klaus concentrated on more urgent legislation — particularly laws connected with the division of Czechoslovakia into two separate states, which took place on Jan. 1.

Current Czech restitution legislation only affects property expropriated after the Communist takeover of the country on Feb. 25, 1948.

But the majority of former Jewish property which is now owned or used by the state or municipalities had been expropriated by the Nazis after the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939.

ONLY A FEW TOWNS WOULD RETURN BUILDINGS

Immediately after the war, it had been possible to reclaim Jewish property from the Czechoslovak authorities.

But as a result of several factors — including obstruction of the process by government authorities, the lack of formal evidence, as well as the deaths of many claimants at Nazi hands — a large part of the formerly Jewish property had not been returned before the Communist takeover of 1948.

In subsequent years, the Communists refused to return any state-administered wealth to individuals or religious communities.

More recently, a number of leading politicians, including former President Vaclav Havel, had expressed their support of a bill that would remedy former injustices against the Jewish community.

But in the current ruling coalition — particularly within the Civic Democratic Party of Prime Minister Klaus — the prevailing desire is for a new law that would return only those properties that had been used for communal religious activities.

If the new law were enacted Jewish property taken away from individual members of the Jewish community before Feb. 25, 1948 would not be subject to restitution at all.

Only a few municipalities have shown any willingness to return buildings which once belonged to the Jewish community.

Danicek, the Jewish federation’s president, warned that “three of the nine still existing Jewish communities in the Czech Republic” might have to close down for economic reasons.