Restitution a ‘victory for Hitler’ – Polish PM
THE IDEA of Poland compensating Jews for property taken from them during the Second World War would be a “posthumous victory for Hitler”, the country’s prime minister has said.
Speaking at a rally in Lodz on Friday, Mateusz Morawiecki said that as long as his Law and Justice party was in power, such compensation would never happen.
“If someone says that Poland is to pay any compensation to anyone, we say: we do not agree to it,” he told the crowd. Later, visiting Krakow, he added: “Today, there are those in the world who have the nerve to ask [for] compensation from Poland for German crimes. There is no agreement for such compensation and such behaviour.”
Recent years have seen renewed tension between Israel and Poland over the degree of Polish culpability for the events of the Holocaust.
Poland’s government maintains the Polish people were fellow victims of the Nazis and that blaming them for the Holocaust is insulting. By contrast, many Jewish survivors have spoken of Poles acting as willing accomplices to the Nazis and subsequently stealing the homes and property of Jews who had been deported to ghettoes and death camps, even though there were hundreds of Poles who risked their lives to protect Jewish friends and neighbours.
When Jewish survivors returned to their former villages and towns after the war to try and reclaim their property, some were murdered. The 1946 Kielce Pogrom saw Polish soldiers, police officers and civilians kill scores of Jews.
The World Jewish Congress and other Jewish organisations condemned Mr Morawiecki’s statement, but Israel opted to remain silent.
Speaking off the record, Israeli diplomats said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was anxious that the restitution issue did not harm relations with the government of Poland, which he considers one of Israel’s staunchest allies in the European Union.