From Polish Death Camps to Denials of Restitution

"[The Polish government now has to move beyond] declarations of non-acceptance for the claims of Jewish communities from the United States or Israel to specific legal solutions that will protect us against such demands [wartime reparations to Jewish-Polish victims] in the future."
Tomasz Rzymkowski, MP, right-wing nationalist Kukiz ’15 bloc

"[This is] the war which the Jews are waging against the Polish nation."
"The Jews started this war centuries ago. In fact they have always conducted it against the Poles and against the whole Christian world."
Grzegorz Braun, Polish weekly Najwyzszy Czas 

"The issue of restitution has served as a pretext for the Polish far-right to whip up an antisemitic hysteria. It became a big theme in the European Parliament election campaign, which has been tainted by xenophobia and hate speech, especially through propaganda channels on YouTube."
"[Opposition to restitution was] also a fruit of the wave of antisemitism in Polish media and politics  during the controversy around the 2018 Institute of National Remembrance Act [which effectively criminalized public discussion of Polish collusion with the Nazis]."
"Unfortunately, we are still witnessing the repercussions of that [when Poland backed down in the face of diplomatic protests by Israel and the United States]."
Rafal Pankowski, director, “Never Again” Association, Poland’s leading anti-racist group 

"Jewish claims are a real danger for all of us."
"The Polish government is facing the historical test of responsibility for the nation amid demands that have only an ethical but not legal basis."
"We want ruling politicians to defend our properties."
Robert Bakiewicz, National March group, Poland

A marcher in Warsaw carries an antisemitic sign at a protest against the restitution of property stolen from Polish Jews during the Nazi occupation. Photo: Agencja Gazeta / Maciej Jazwiecki via Reuters

The 'our properties' Mr. Bakiewicz speaks of represent properties belonging to Jewish Polish citizens who perished during the Holocaust. Their properties quickly claimed by Poles. Jewish survivors of the Holocaust who returned to their villages in the expectation that they could reclaim their homes were quickly disabused of that naive trust when Polish villagers, their neighbours for hundreds of years, turned on them violently leaving the survivors no option but to leave their village and their property for a second time.

Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Saturday made the public vow that Poland is prepared to reject compensation demands. Its citizens, he pointed out again -- the predictable mantra of the government of Poland in all such matters concerning Jews who are exempted post-history of ever having been citizens -- were victims of atrocities from German occupation and noble Poland "cannot bear any responsibility".

Nazi Germany constructed more death camps on Polish soil than anywhere else, knowing there would be no protest from Poland over the fate the Third Reich had in store for Europe's Jews. In all of Europe, Poland had the largest Jewish population; 3.3 million, a population that had lived there for eight hundred years, through constant government- and church-sanctioned pogroms, and it was in Poland that more Jewish lives were annihilated than anywhere else in Europe; 380 thousand Polish Jews survived.

Lodz, Poland, Deportation from the ghetto in the summer of 1944   Yad Vashem

As the only member state of the European Union not to have passed restitution legislation in recognition of Holocaust victims' properties and passing it on to survivors and their descendants, Poland in effect is contradicting its own assertion that the six infamous death camps -- Chelmo, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau, at which collectively three-and-a- third million Jews were murdered -- were not 'Polish death camps' but German death camps situated in Poland.

Poland was determined to pass a law to be recognized internationally to that effect, making it unlawful to reference those camps as 'Polish' rather than German. A plan that ran afoul of international opinion. An estimated ten to twenty thousand Polish nationalists on Saturday marched through Warsaw with loud demands that no compensation be paid to Jews whose properties were confiscated by Germans and Poles during the Second World War, and which later came into Communist hands.

As the sole ex-Communist country lacking comprehensive legislation addressing property claims that had been nationalized, that in itself speaks volumes about a Poland which dismisses ethical responsibility with the shrug that no law exists, internationally or otherwise, that mandates them to do so. The U.S. Congress joined the World Jewish Restitution Organization which has called repeatedly on Poland to address itself to property claims by U.S. citizen Holocaust survivors and their families.

"No to claims", chanted the protesters. "Here is Poland not Polin", referring to the Hebrew word for Poland. Signs were prominent in display with messages such as "unconstitutional robbery plunder", and they did not refer to the looting by Poles of Jewish property. Copies of the infamous anti-Semitic Czar-era slander, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were being distributed. Right-wing extremist Poles demonstrating their anti-Semitic bona fides.

Poland's refusal to consider restitution for Jews hasn't stopped it from demanding that Germany pay attention to Poland's demands for restitution, however. Poland is demanding 800 billion euros in restitution from Germany. Six million Poles, including three million Polish Jews, were killed during WWII. Arkadiusz Mularczyk, head of the Polish parliamentary committee on reparations, said "It’s time for a decision from the Polish Sejm (lower house of Parliament)" to pursue reparations from Germany.