Efforts to get back Jewish property confiscated during the Nazi occupation of this country have become a hotly debated issue here as property confiscated by the former Communist government is returned to its original owners.
The federation of Jewish communities of the Czech Republic has drawn up a list of 120 sites qualifying for restitution. They include synagogues, cemeteries, the Prague Jewish Museum and property that had belonged to B’nai B’rith lodges and Maccabi Hagibor sport clubs.
Jewish leaders, such as Jiri Danicek, president of the Federation of Jewish Communities, have proposed that the properties be returned to them under legislation to be drafted specifically for that purpose, since the current restitution laws would not apply to them.
After the collapse of the Communist regime in 1989, the new government passed laws to return confiscated property to its rightful owners, but they applied only to property taken after Feb. 25, 1948, the date of the Communist takeover.
Czech Jewish leaders insist that they, too, should be able to claim back buildings and land taken from the community between 1939 and 1945.
The government, however, is loath to push back the time limit of the current legislation to before 1948, since property restitution claims might then be applied to the nearly 3 million ethnic Germans who were expelled from Czechoslovakia and resettled in Germany, in accordance with the Potsdam agreement worked out with the victorious Allies.
The property was said to be expropriated from these ethnic Germans because they collaborated with the Nazis.
To get around this problem, Jewish leaders have proposed that special legislation pertaining to them be passed. The issue has become controversial, dividing political parties here.
SUPPORT FROM ONE PARTY
Jewish communities and individuals were dispossessed of their property during the Nazi occupation of the Czechoslovakia. After Adolf Hitler’s defeat in 1945, the former Jewish property was considered as confiscated from Germans, who had been its last users.
Postwar decrees enabled Jews and Jewish organizations to apply for restitution of their former property, but the decimated minority of Holocaust survivors in most cases did not have enough strength or interest to make the necessary inquiries and start legal procedures in time.
As the current post-Communist government begins returning property that the Communist regime expropriated, the Jewish community feels that it has a second chance, and the right, to present its claims again. Accordingly, the list of major Jewish properties was drawn up.
The Liberal Civic Democratic Alliance, one of the coalition parties, has said it strongly supports the return of Jewish property.
Daniel Kroupa, one of the party’s senior politicians, said the restitution should not be considered as violating the February 1948 time limit in the general restitution laws, but as a special case of undoing injustices committed by the Nazis. The move would constitute a gesture of good will on the part of the state, he said.
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