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August 5, 2019
The Honorable Michael R. Pompeo Secretary of State United States Department of State 2201 C Street NW Washington, DC 20011
Dear Mr. Secretary,
The United States and Poland have a strong relationship dating back to the American Revolutionary War that continues today through our NATO partnership. Our alliance is not only based on shared interests, but also the deep affinity between our peoples, who aspire to common ideals. One of those ideals, respect for private property rights, is foundational to the success of democracies.
That is why we were heartened by your public statement in Warsaw in February calling on Poland to take appropriate steps to restitute private property belonging to Holocaust victims, their families and others from whom it was confiscated during the Communist era. Prime Minister Morawiecki’s response to your comments, in which he said that Poland has “resolved” this issue, was deeply troubling. As you know, the issue has not been resolved, nor will it go away.
Now is the time, while the last Holocaust survivors are still alive, to back up our words with meaningful action. We encourage you to pursue bold initiatives to help Poland to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.
Poland suffered greatly during the Second World War, and its Jewish population was singled out by the Nazis for extermination. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, approximately 3 million Jews - 90% of Poland’s prewar Jewish population - were murdered by the Nazis. An estimated 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish civilians were killed by the Nazis as well. It was the Nazi regime and its allies and collaborators - not Poland- that systematically confiscated Jewish property during the Second World War.
After the war, the Communist regime in Poland nationalized property owned by Jews and non- Jews. In the decades since the fall of the Iron Curtain, Jewish Holocaust survivors of Polish origin and their families as well as others have found it nearly impossible to reclaim or seek compensation for the property that was nationalized by the Polish Communist regime. In fact, Poland is the only country in the European Union that has not passed a comprehensive law for the restitution of or compensation for private property, despite in 2009, endorsing the Terezin Declaration on Holocaust Era Assets along with the United States and 45 other nations which among other things encouraged states to pass national legislation that facilitates restitution “in a fair, comprehensive and nondiscriminatory manner.”
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