Restitution and the "Gold train"

[wm]

What this has to do with the subject?
There was a war, and there was the occupation and lots of people were harmed, killed or murdered.

There were Polish hyenas, and there were Jewish hyenas. Just read the Ten Scourges of the Warsaw Ghetto to see this.
There was no difference because hyenas have no nationality.

The fact that some people disliked Jews had nothing to do with anything. Lots of people today dislike Russians, Germans, Jews, Americans and don't kill anyone.

Murders for political reasons were few and far between.

Please provide a list, so we could see how often they happened. You said it, now prove it.

[David Thompson]

wm -- You wrote, apparently to the air but presumably regarding 4thskorpion's post:

What this has to do with the subject?
There was a war, and there was the occupation and lots of people were harmed, killed or murdered.

There were Polish hyenas, and there were Jewish hyenas. Just read the Ten Scourges of the Warsaw Ghetto to see this.
There was no difference because hyenas have no nationality.

The fact that some people disliked Jews had nothing to do with anything. Lots of people today dislike Russians, Germans, Jews, Americans and don't kill anyone.

Murders for political reasons were few and far between.

Please provide a list, so we could see how often they happened. You said it, now prove it.

If 4thskorpion's post has nothing to do with the subject, there's no need to ask for a list.

Your own posts, with their persistently invidious asides about the United States and Jews, have already created their own topicality problems in this thread. We don't run this forum as a bulletin board for posters' personal notions or prejudices, and we're not much interested in flamebait posts either.

[wm]

Well, it can't be denied that nothing to do with the subject, there's no need to ask is logical. And both posts need deleting badly.

Nobody has claimed that property shouldn't be returned, the right to private property is a human right.
So Jan T. Gross opinions, based on an undefined moral system of his don't support anything, because there is nothing to support - the property should be returned, nobody denies it.

If you care to check: all the links I have posted are primary sources of information, it's unlikely the readers would be able to find that information on their own, ever.
All the other posted information is just copy/paste from popular press.

I don't not quite understand this part about invidious remarks. I only said that the US shouldn't be in it and why, because someone ask about it. That is all. It's not my opinion - I think I've proved it by posting a relevant, fifty years old agreement between Poland and the US.

If people could be offended so easily how about this:
various branches of my family lived in distantly separate places where Jews were murdered by the thousands: Zofiówka [Trochenbrod], Łódź (Litzmannstadt), Brześć (Brest).
They and their neighbours saw how it was done with their own eyes. They didn't kill anyone themselves, they didn't steal anything. For them it was such emotional trauma, they later were telling the stories all over again, at every possible opportunity till their last days.
And now, we the neighbors [of the Jews] have to read that there was massive failure of character and reason on the part of [us], without any proof, just like that in some random thread.

[BenjaminJ]

From the Deutsche Welle's article at the top of the page:

Jewish organisations and the US government have raised objections to Poland's decision to suspend work on the restitution of Jewish property confiscated by the Nazis during WWII and under communism.
The Polish government suspended work on the restitution package on March 10, due to its spiraling budget deficit.

From the website of one of those organizations:

[We] have worked closely with the U.S. Congress.

The problem is the US government is not a party to this dispute, those people are not nationals of the United States.
Your government is a bystander, but this bystander is a 800-pound gorilla.

As you can see here the US nationals have been compensated already.

The because they were different comes from the fact the US government only cares about interests (and interferes in Polish internal affairs) of those foreign Jewish organizations although identical problems have lots of non-Jews. It's not a racial issue.

Thanks for the links, wasn't doubting you, just hadnt heard that before. Yet another reason to be ashamed of this current Adminstration.

[BenjaminJ]

What this has to do with the subject?
There was a war, and there was the occupation and lots of people were harmed, killed or murdered.

There were Polish hyenas, and there were Jewish hyenas. Just read the Ten Scourges of the Warsaw Ghetto to see this.
There was no difference because hyenas have no nationality.

The fact that some people disliked Jews had nothing to do with anything. Lots of people today dislike Russians, Germans, Jews, Americans and don't kill anyone.

Murders for political reasons were few and far between.

Please provide a list, so we could see how often they happened. You said it, now prove it.

That is utter nonsense. Thats like saying Hitler only slightly disliked the Jews. Its so ridiculous its amazing that you would try and put forth that assertion.

[4thskorpion]

What this has to do with the subject?

I take you mean Gross's text below?

"Living Jews embodied the massive failure of character and reason on the part of their Polish neighbors and constituted by mere presence both a reminder and a threat that they might need to account for themselves. A live Jew converted mienie pożydowskie, “formerly Jewish property,” into property that belonged to somebody else, and various strata of Polish society could not bear any examination of the books documenting how it was acquired, in an infinite multitude of transactions, what went under the pożydowskie label.|

Well I think it is highly pertinent to the subject and Gross offers an argument that is still valid today as to why Poland has failed so miserably to enact any Holocaust era restitution legislation even after it has made many commitments to do so.

However there is a glimmer of light in recent news that suggests that Poland’s President Bronislaw Komorowski is not to sign a bill into law that would have severely restricted claims for the restitution of properties confiscated during and after World War II. http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/n ... l-8-3-2015

As to the claimed US interference in Poland's internal affairs? Nonsense. Governments often act of behalf of its citizens who suffer injustice at the hands of other national governments. In this case the injustice suffered by US Holocaust survivors originally from Poland who emigrated to the US often to escape post-war anti-Semitism in Poland who have been trying for decades to get some kind of resolution to the Holocaust-era assets restitution issue.

There was a war, and there was the occupation and lots of people were harmed, killed or murdered.

There were Polish hyenas, and there were Jewish hyenas. Just read the Ten Scourges of the Warsaw Ghetto to see this.
There was no difference because hyenas have no nationality.

The fact that some people disliked Jews had nothing to do with anything. Lots of people today dislike Russians, Germans, Jews, Americans and don't kill anyone.

Murders for political reasons were few and far between.

Please provide a list, so we could see how often they happened. You said it, now prove it.

A list of what to prove what?

[wm]

That is utter nonsense. Thats like saying Hitler only slightly disliked the Jews. Its so ridiculous its amazing that you would try and put forth that assertion.

An example:
rapists are raping women because they dislike or hate them. Some certainly do but it's not why they do it.
But after the fact they love to blame the victim. That it was her fault, if was because of her behavior, lifestyle or clothes.

After the Jews were all send to their deaths some of them escaped and wandered around the country or went in hiding. In the course of a few years, in many or some places most of them were robbed and killed.
The man cited by 4thskorpion claims it happened for political reasons, because those criminals hated the Jews. And additionally that there was massive moral failure among the Poles.

But the fact is those people who did it always were opportunistic thieves, opportunistic robbers, opportunistic killers. They were like that before, during and after the occupation.
The only difference is during the occupation there were defenseless victims available to prey upon. And it was profitable to rob/kill a Jew because it was profitable to rob/kill with impunity.
Any unguarded property usually was looted, defenseless men/women were killed or robbed. It had nothing to do with ethnicity. As it is today.

There was an electricity blackout in New York, in 1977. As result they had a city-wide looting there. It didn't take much - as those people there could loot with impunity.

[wm]

"Living Jews embodied the massive failure of character and reason on the part of their Polish neighbors and constituted by mere presence both a reminder and a threat that they might need to account for themselves. A live Jew converted mienie pożydowskie, “formerly Jewish property,” into property that belonged to somebody else, and various strata of Polish society could not bear any examination of the books documenting how it was acquired, in an infinite multitude of transactions, what went under the pożydowskie label.|

I don't really know what are you trying to say.
The Nazi confiscated all the Jewish property, and some Polish property and sold it to Germans and to Poles.
Many of the buyers didn't want to return what they bought because it was all they had. They expected they would be given compensation and/or some other place to live.

As to the claimed US interference in Poland's internal affairs? Nonsense. Governments often act of behalf of its citizens who suffer injustice at the hands of other national governments. In this case the injustice suffered by US Holocaust survivors originally from Poland who emigrated to the US often to escape post-war anti-Semitism in Poland who have been trying for decades to get some kind of resolution to the Holocaust-era assets restitution issue.

You don't read what the others write, do you?
It's not true that the US Holocaust survivors need compensation. All of them have been compensated already.

[4thskorpion]

The most common feature of Jewish “homecoming” was returns to homes and enterprises occupied by somebody else. As Lasman wrote, “…these houses were obviously not vacant and did not wait for their lawful owners….”1

In small villages, it was usually a neighbor – a familiar face –who occupied a survivor’s house,

On the way I stood near my grandfather’s house. … I wanted to go into the house, sit down for a while, absorb the weeping of the walls, and watch the reaction of the Poles who lived there now when I reminded them who the previous owners had been, who had built the house and planted the trees, and who had died so frightfully and tragically. I clearly realized how apathetically they would react. After all, they all knew this had been a Jewish town [Ryki].2

In bigger towns and cities, old-time neighbors, total strangers, or state officials took over abandoned apartments, businesses, or tenement houses. Leah Laskowski testified in 1983.

The Red Cross took me on a stretcher to the train, and I was on my way back to my home in Łódz, Poland. When I reached what had once been my home, I found it was no longer mine. A Polish neighbor had moved in and occupied it now. All I could find there to remind me of the past – was a single lamp. I remained with the Polish neighbor for a few days…”3

1 Noach Lasman, Wspomnienia z Polski: 1 Sierpnia 1944-30 do Kwietnia 1957 (Warszawa: ydowski Instytut Historyczny, 1997), 16.
2 Yakov Handshtok, “In the Tracks of the Jewish Life that Disappeared,” in Jack Kugelmass and Jonathan Boyarin, ed., From a Ruined Garden: the Memorial Books of Polish Jewry (New York: Schocken Books, 1983), 264.
3 Testimony of Leah Laskowski, April 1983, Collection of testimonies, American Gathering ConferenceCollection, Poland, RG 02.002/20, USHMM.

[BenjaminJ]

That is utter nonsense. Thats like saying Hitler only slightly disliked the Jews. Its so ridiculous its amazing that you would try and put forth that assertion.

An example:
rapists are raping women because they dislike or hate them. Some certainly do but it's not why they do it.
But after the fact they love to blame the victim. That it was her fault, if was because of her behavior, lifestyle or clothes.

After the Jews were all send to their deaths some of them escaped and wandered around the country or went in hiding. In the course of a few years, in many or some places most of them were robbed and killed.
The man cited by 4thskorpion claims it happened for political reasons, because those criminals hated the Jews. And additionally that there was massive moral failure among the Poles.

But the fact is those people who did it always were opportunistic thieves, opportunistic robbers, opportunistic killers. They were like that before, during and after the occupation.
The only difference is during the occupation there were defenseless victims available to prey upon. And it was profitable to rob/kill a Jew because it was profitable to rob/kill with impunity.
Any unguarded property usually was looted, defenseless men/women were killed or robbed. It had nothing to do with ethnicity. As it is today.

There was an electricity blackout in New York, in 1977. As result they had a city-wide looting there. It didn't take much - as those people there could loot with impunity.

Yeah, not even close to reality. Dream world. All that stuff happened. To argue there was no politics behind the extermination of the Jews is either ignorance or willfull ignorance.

[Piotr Kapuscinski]

Well Poland was basically a created country with little standing until the Versailles treaty that simply created "Poland". Half of Poland was Prussia, which was German Empire. To argue differently is to invite getting run over by either Germany or Russia.

Poland was established in the 900s and existed until 1795 if not counting Polish rump states such as the Duchy of Warsaw (1807-1815), Congress Poland (1815-1867)*, Grand Duchy of Poznan (1815-1848), or the Independent And Strictly Neutral Republic of Cracow (1815-1846).

German Empire was created in 1871. Prussia was originally a Baltic-speaking (related to Lithuanians) nation in the region of Kaliningrad.

*In 1867 Congress Poland was dissolved and Vistula Land was established in its place.

[Marcus]

This thread is continuing further off-topic so I see a pad-lock in its very near future if this does not change.

/Marcus

[Marcus]

Two posts dealing with the train rather than the restitution were moved to the relevant thread at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 6&t=217416

/Marcus

[4thskorpion]

It's not true that the US Holocaust survivors need compensation. All of them have been compensated already.

Actually maybe not.

The most important problem comes from the fact that both the Agreement and the Law encompass de-facto appropriation or restriction of use with respect to real estate, done by the state without any legal basis, which was very common shortly after WW2. However, neither of the acts define such factual transfers, nor do they clearly indicate the prerequisites for them to take legal effect. In addition, there are no fixed criteria of establishing the scope of such transfer – i.e. whether the state took over the ownership of property or just imposed certain restrictions on its use. The courts have tried to fill these gaps by a somewhat creative interpretation of both acts, reaching varied and sometimes contradictory conclusions. At the same time, most courts have so far seemed to turn a blind eye to the fact that the Agreement was never ratified by Poland, as required by the Constitution (Article 87 sect. 1), and so cannot constitute a valid source of law. In fact, acknowledging this would result in the Law being left in a “regulatory void”, and would have serious consequences for all the decisions issued on its basis.

Source: http://polishprivatelaw.pl/jewish-prope ... -measures/

[4thskorpion]

It seems that "abandoned" Jewish property was also "up-for-grabs" by Poles in 1915:

Page 23 : Black Earth-The Holocaust as History and Warning by Timothy Snyder, September 2015