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Friday February 18, 2005

Lawsuit filed in Polish case could set precedent for restitution

by lauren elkin
jta

paris | A case before the European Court of Human Rights is being seen as a landmark that could force Poland to compensate Holocaust survivors and their descendants for their material losses.

Ongoing attempts to receive compensation from a succession of Polish governments have never succeeded fully, as the country is the only one of the former Soviet satellites with no laws to compensate people for the loss of private property during World War II and the communist era.

At a Feb. 9 news conference in Paris, Henryk Pikielny, 76, announced that he had filed the lawsuit at the human-rights court in Strasbourg for “moral, not financial” reasons.

The case, the first on Polish restitution to be filed at the European court, was filed shortly before a delegation of American and Israeli Jews arrives in Poland this week to discuss the issue of restitution legislation with officials.

The Polish government is expected to present a proposal for compensating Holocaust survivors and their heirs to the country’s Parliament next month. But survivors consider the proposal “unacceptable” because it would provide restitution worth only a fraction of a property’s value, according to Kalman Sultanik, a JTA board member who is leading the delegation.

Polish officials would not comment directly on the Pikielny case.

“Each case is treated in Poland individually by the proper authorities and courts,” a representative of the Polish Embassy in Washington said. “Where it’s legally possible, property is returned or compensation given.”

Those supporting the Pikielny case are not optimistic about the prospects of advances being achieved internally.

MIT Pikielny, a textile manufacturer, was founded in Lodz in 1889 by Pikielny’s grandfather, Mojzesz. By 1939, when the Nazis invaded Poland, the company had 15 buildings, 200 employees and 200 looms.

Pikielny’s mother, grandfather and many other relatives died at the hands of the Nazis. Along with his father and brother, Pikielny left for Brazil in 1946. He now lives in Paris.

After World War II, confiscated property was nationalized and appropriated by Poland’s communist government, and MIT Pikielny passed through the hands of a series of state-owned entities. Since the country’s democratization in 1990, the company has remained a government holding.

After the fall of communism, Pikielny initiated a number of attempts to regain possession of the company. In 2004, he finally was told that he had no chance of ever receiving compensation. Since 1939, Pikielny and his family have seen none of the profits from the company that bears their name.

After they exhausted every possible legal channel in Poland, Pikielny said, he and his family began to look to the European Union for alternative courses of action.

The case is being brought by a charitable law firm known as the New York Legal Assistance Group, or NYLAG, in conjunction with the Holocaust Compensation Assistance Project, which is funded by the Claims Conference and UJA-Federation of New York.

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