Polish Government Asked to Indemnify Holocaust Victims

The American Federation of Polish Jews reported that it has submitted a series of claims to the Polish government including full payment of all pensions and other insurance claims to Polish-Jewish survivors of the Holocaust now living outside Poland and indemnification for Jewish property in Poland expropriated by the authorities there.

A memorandum containing these and other demands was presented to the Polish Ambassador in Washington, Vitold Tromcrynsky, by a delegation that included Shlomo Ben Israel, vice-chairman of the Federation and a writer on the staff of the Jewish Daily Forward; Benjamin Gray, an attorney and Los Angeles Jewish community leader; and Felix Lasky, secretary of the Association of Nazi Victims,

Regarding pension and insurance claims, the memorandum noted that the claimants were elderly persons, most of whom were former workers or employes in Poland who had paid national insurance dues thereby acquiring pension and social security rights.

The memorandum also noted that the Polish authorities have appropriated land, buildings, museums, synagogues, old-aged homes, schools and sports clubs that had been the property of the former Jewish community in Poland, endowed by Jewish charities in Poland and by public and private benefactors abroad. “The assets or their value should be handed over to the Federation of Polish Jews,” the memorandum said.

OTHER DEMANDS LISTED

The memorandum further called on the Polish authorities “to take all necessary steps to preserve and restore Jewish cemeteries and to combat desecration of hallowed places; to permit us to collect religious and secular Jewish relics and to allow us to take them out of Poland for preservation as Jewish memorabilia” and to permit “free access to all historical records and archives concerning the involvement of Polish Jews in the life of Poland in the spheres of economics, politics, art, literature as well as in the struggles for Poland’s independence in past centuries.”

The memorandum also asked the Polish government to honor its promise “to hand over to the World Federation of Polish Jews one of the prison huts in the former Auschwitz camp so that it could be arranged as a memorial shrine to Jews martyred in that camp.”