Property Restitution Demands Devious Lehrer

Jewish Space in Contemporary Poland, by Erica T. Lehrer (Editor), Michael Meng (Editor). 2014

Holocaust Industry: The 1997 Communal-Property Restitution Law. Poland’s Jewish Revival Openly a Tool Against Poland’s Catholic Culture

In my review, I focus on matters of the greatest importance in Polish-Jewish relations.

HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY: UNCLEAR BOUNDARY BETWEEN JEWISH-ESSENTIAL AND JEWISH-NONESSENTIAL COMMUNAL PROPERTIES

Author Stanislaw Tyszka provides some details on the 1997 communal property restitution law. Stuart E. Eizenstat is credited with playing an important role in making it a reality. (p. 51).

Pointedly, the 1997 law required, in order for restitution to be granted, that the present-day local Jewish community prove that it actually needed the long-ago Jewish communal property for religious, educational, or cultural purposes. (p. 50). However, this is evidently not what happened. In many locations, the Jewish community accepted monetary restitution, in lieu of the building itself, because its restoration/upkeep would be too costly, AND BECAUSE THERE WERE TOO FEW LOCAL JEWS TO USE THE SYNAGOGUE. (pp. 58-59). The author adds that, “The situation of former synagogues in places where there is no local Jewish community remains problematic.” (p. 56). That is quite an understatement.

Moreover, author Stanislaw Tyszka does not make the connection: If there were too few Jews to use the synagogue building that they had demanded “returned”, then it means that the building was NOT essential to the Jewish community in the first place! So—apart from a few exceptions based on a building’s architectural or historical value—why was it restituted in the first place? Something is not kosher here.

Apropos to this, Norman Finkelstein once asked this astute question: Given 6,000 surviving synagogue buildings in Poland and 6,000 remaining active Jews in Poland, is every single Jew entitled to his or her own private synagogue?

The point is clear: There is no real distinction between “essential” and “nonessential” communal properties for today’s Polish Jews. What is to prevent the vagueness of the 1997 law serving as a precedent—a “camel’s nose under the tent”—for the Holocaust Industry to come back to Poland to demand the “restitution” of more and more of the onetime communal properties of long-gone Jews?

PROPERTY RESTITUTION OF INDIVIDUAL JEWISH PROPERTIES: NOT HAPPENING

Tyszka laments that, “In terms of restitution legislation, however, Poland stands out as the only country that has not yet adopted a general law on compensation for individuals who lost property during or after World War II.” (p. 46).

Why so? The author points out that the leftist authorities of post-1989 Poland were reluctant to grant property restitution for a number of reasons, which he lists. (p. 55). Thus, the political compromise with the Communists had included the UWLASZCZENIE NOMENKLATURY, which allowed the “propertization” of the Communist NOMENKLATURA, and which made problematic the restitution of property to former owners. In addition, the leftist post-1989 governments feared that restitution of private property would politically favor their political opponents—the rightists. Finally, property restitution would be an exercise in historical justice trumping social justice, and this was deemed unacceptable.

THE RESTITUTION OF COMMUNAL PROPERTIES, AND THE SOUGHT-AFTER RESTITUTION OF INDIVIDUAL PROPERTIES, GO HAND-IN-HAND

Tyszka quips, “It is possible to speculate that if more heirs of individual owners had been allowed to regain their properties, at least some of them would come back to Poland and contribute to the preservation efforts.” (p. 66). [And likewise also contribute to more demands for the restitution of communal properties.] It is rather obvious that the attempted property restitution of INDIVIDUAL properties is not an end in itself: It is also a “camel’s nose under the tent” for the empowerment of successive demands for more and more COMMUNAL property restitution.

WHY THE SECRECY? THE ADMITTEDLY COVERT OPERATIONS OF THE HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY IN POLAND

In June 2000, the WJRO and UJRC joined efforts together, and established the FPJH (Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage). (p. 51). Tyszka states that the financial reports of the FPJH are ALLEGEDLY audited under the provisions of Polish law, “YET THESE REPORTS HAVE NOT BEEN MADE AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC, which has led to speculation about the foundation’s finances. Despite this LACK OF TRANSPARENCY, it is clear that financial matters influence the foundation’s approach to synagogue restoration projects.” (Emphasis added. p. 64).

THE HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY: PRIMARILY A MONEYMAKING OPERATION

Author Stanislaw Tyszka concludes that, “The Jewish religious communities use restitution first and foremost as a source of income to cover their daily expenses. While they have preserved synagogues used for religious purposes, they are not particularly interested in the preservation of Jewish material heritage in general. The WJRO through the FPJH has, in turn, pursued a RATHER VAGUE POLICY with regard to Jewish material heritage, even though it has declared the preservation of Jewish material heritage to be its main objective.” (Emphasis added. p. 66).

Ironic to all this, Poland is often told that she is the one that has a “duty” to memorialize her Jewish past. Really.

The inability of Poland’s Jews to afford the restoration, of many of the “re-acquired” Jewish communal properties, is telling in its own way. It shows the REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM of the Holocaust Industry and its demand that communal properties that had not been Jewish-owned, Jewish-used, or Jewish-maintained, for 75 years now, suddenly be “restituted” to their “rightful” Jewish ownership. Actually, this is not surprising at all. They serve as cash cows. No sooner are the long-unused and long-dilapidated properties restituted than the new Jewish owners announce that “the properties are not repairable”, and sell them for cash.

Of course, many of the reclaimed buildings are not vacant. They currently serve as town libraries, schools, hospitals, parks, etc. (p. 53), and most reclaimed synagogues have long been transformed for other uses. (p. 55). So, barring massive upheavals, they cannot possibly be “returned” to the Jews. They, too, serve as cash cows, for the pretensions of the Holocaust Industry, whenever they are successfully “restituted”.

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PRICELESS! A SERIOUS CALL FOR THE JEWISH REVIVAL IN POLAND TO HELP WEAKEN POLAND’S CATHOLIC IDENTITY

We have long been told that Poland’s Jews are just a tiny remnant community, and that anyone suspicious of Jewish motives is caught up in a paranoid “Polish anti-Semitism without Jews” fantasy. Surely only a rabid anti-Semite could imagine that Jews could possibly dilute Poland’s fundamental Catholic identity.

Think again. Jewish author Erica Lehrer, in an indirect way, expresses EXACTLY this hope. Revealingly, she writes, “In Poland, Jewish heritage has functioned in important ways as a tool for Poles to reimagine their country in pluralist terms, a counterweight to rightwing rhetoric that stresses the longstanding, dominant conception of Polishness as essentially Polish-Catholic. In a contemporary demographic reality in which 95 percent of Polish citizens are baptized Catholics, Jewish heritage is both a vehicle to reclaim aspects of a prewar history of multiethnic coexistence across Polish terrain, as well as to envision a future Poland that may stand among peers in an increasingly multiethnic European Union.”. (p. 172). [No, thanks.]

ELEVATING THE HOLOCAUST AND DISPARAGING THE POLISH EXPERIENCE

As is typical of books of this type, this one includes the one-two punch of Holocaust Supremacism and undisguised hostility to Polish Catholic and patriotic traditions. Erica Lehrer and Michael Meng repeat the meme of the “Holocaust as a major civilizational break in modern European and Western history”. [wow] (p. 8). [Needless to say, no genocide of any other peoples, least that of the Poles, gets anything like this kind of grandiose mystification.] But the marginalization of Poland’s sufferings is not enough. Genevieve Zubrzycki, evidently one of the LEWACTWO, makes snide remarks about what she calls “Polish ethno-Catholic myths”. (p. 28, 41). So sorry, Ms. Zubrzycki, but Polish achievements and sufferings are facts, not myths, and these narratives are not about to disappear down an Orwellian memory hole just because the LEWAKS so earnestly wish that they would.

THAT OLD SAW—YET AGAIN—ABOUT POSTWAR AUSCHWITZ “HIDING JEWISH DEATHS”

Genevieve Zubrzycki repeats the canned complaint that the post-WWII placard in Auschwitz “merely” listed dozens of nationalities of peoples murdered in Auschwitz—and did so for the deliberate purpose of hiding the fact that most of the victims of Auschwitz-Birkenau were Jews. Worse yet, the listing was done alphabetically because, in the Polish language, Jews (ZYDZI), appear at the end of the list, thus further minimizing them. (p. 19). Ah, those clever, malevolent Poles.

This Polonophobic canard is refuted by elementary facts. The postwar Polish government always affirmed the specific fact of millions of Nazi-murdered Jews, as targeted for no other reason except the fact that they were Jews, and NEVER tried to hide them or simply blend them with Nazi-murdered Poles.