Uncertainty on Czech Reparations for Confiscated Jewish Property

A bill before Parliament providing for the partial return of confiscated Jewish property faces no open opposition by any Czech political party, but its fate remains uncertain, according to Jiri Danicek, the president of the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic.

The bill, now under debate by different parliamentary committees, will probably be submitted to a plenary session of the house before or shortly after the end of the year.

The measure deals exclusively with former Jewish property now held by the state that was confiscated by both the Nazi and Communist regimes. It is based on a list of 208 items whose original Jewish communities have requested their return.

The list comprises mostly synagogue buildings and Jewish cemeteries, as well as the collection of the Prague State Jewish Museum, which was expropriated by the Communists in 1950.

The proposed law also provides for the return of some private property, which was not returned to surviving owners or their relatives between the Nazis’ defeat in 1945 and the Communist takeover in 1948.

Only a limited number of individual cases are involved, since most Jewish estates expropriated by the Nazis and taken over by the state have no legal heirs who survived the Holocaust.

Legislation on property restitution is not very popular in this country, without regard to the religion of the property’s original owner.

Strong popular feelings have been expressed, for example, against the restitution of estates and land to the Roman Catholic Church, as proposed by another bill being discussed simultaneously with the “Jewish” bill.

Discussions on the return of Jewish property are complicated by the fact that these claims antedate the statute of limitations of Feb. 25, 1948, the date of the Communist takeover.

The reason the country adhered to this deadline was to exclude claims by the ethnic Germans of the Sudetenland, whose property was confiscated after the Nazi defeat, when most of them were expelled from then Czechoslovakia.

Therefore, the “Jewish” bill must present a strong case for former Jewish property appropriated by the state after 1945. “If we do not receive back those items listed in the bill,” said Jewish communal leader Zeno Dostal, “some Jewish communities in the Czech Republic will not be able to survive and care for the remnants of the Jewish heritage.”

The newly constituted nation of Slovakia is ahead of its former Czech half with respect to the return of property to Jewish communities.

Slovakia adopted a law this past September for the restitution of property to Jewish communities.

This law, however, does not deal with private property that was confiscated from the Jews by the fascist puppet regime of Josef Tiso during the war.