Jewish fury at property claims by expelled Germans

[emad]

(London): The Telegraph's Berlin correspondent Kate Connolly reports that:

A pressure group of Germans driven from their homes at the end of the Second World War is prepared to take its fight for compensation to the American courts, modelling its struggle on Jewish compensation claims. The Prussian Claims Society has angered Jewish groups and caused outrage in Poland, which has long feared that some of the 12 million expelled in 1945 or their descendants would return to claim their properties.

The fear has increased as Poland's entry into the European Union nears. Boguslaw Majewski, spokesman for the Polish foreign ministry, said: "What Poland is owed from the war has never been appropriately compensated but all outstanding claims from this time should be perceived to have been closed by now."

The Bonn-based society, which is concentrating on reclaiming homes in Poland but will also back Sudeten Germans thrown out of the Czech Republic and of East Prussians from Russia, was established two years ago. Its leaders have said it would first take test cases to national courts and, if they failed, to the European and US courts.

Rudi Pawelka, the society's head,said it would model its compensation battles on those of the US Jewish Claims Conference, which secured compensation for Holocaust victims. The comparison has greatly angered Jewish groups who have called it "offensive and hurtful".

Polish legal experts say the claims will not stand up in the courts. The Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita accused the Germans of trying to rewrite history. "Germans of today increasingly forget that the generations of their fathers and grandfathers, not just Hitler alone, were responsible for killing millions of people."

<snip>

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/10/07/wgerm07.xml&sSheet=/portal/2003/10/07/ixportal.html

[papau]

1. Inherit the property - but not the history - I wonder if right of return

arabs are helping these poor Germans out?

[legin]

2. This issue has always sucked

Stalin wanted to move Russia's border westward, annexing Polish territory, Poland's border was moved westward as compensation at the expense of Germany. The Germans living there were just ethnically clensed out of their homes.

Churchill and Rovesvelt agreed to it.

Whatever the blame for WWII, this was always wrong.

(posting from memory alert)

[cap]

3. issue is a mess to untangle...

there are some old German families that were just pushed out of their homes. There were some settler families that Hitler gave assistance to go settle in Polish homes (Poles were expelled). The Polish resistance raided and burnt these homes where they could.

The Allies just shifted the borders at the end of WWII. Poles who had been living in present day Lithuania and Ukraine for generations were kicked out of their homes.

If these Germans are talking compensation, they need to remember that 6 million Poles died during WWII -- 3 million Polish Christains and 3 million Polish Jews. Go into a Polish forest and they are dotted with small memorials to where the Nazis killed 6 people over here, 5 people over there, etc. Never mind compensation for rebuilding Warsaw which was completely leveled.


Historically Polish border country has been nebulous. Huge pockets of ethnic groups are intermingled with huge pockets of Poles. There is no fair way to do this. The best is to forget this history and be happy with what you have now.

[blindpig]

4. history, read it and weep

to further complicate matters it must be remembered that German occupation of E Prussia & Sudetenland was the result of eastern expansionism in the Middle Ages. This shit never ends............

[blindpig]

5. history, read it and weep

to further complicate matters it must be remembered that German occupation of E Prussia & Sudetenland was the result of eastern expansionism in the Middle Ages. This shit never ends............