U.S. body slams Poland on compensation
The U.S. Helsinki Commission complained to Poland that it had yet to enact a comprehensive compensation law for victims of Nazism and Communism.
âPoland is the only country in Central Europe that has failed to adopt a general private property compensation or restitution law,â? the commissionâs chairman, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), said in a letter this week to Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz. âWhen you are talking about victims of property confiscation, particularly from the Nazi occupation, you are talking about elderly people for whom every delay truly means justice denied.â?
Brownback noted that the commission, a body monitoring the Helsinki accords and comprising bipartisan representatives from both houses of Congress and from the administration, has been raising the issue with Poland since 2002,
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I was born in Warsaw,Poland, in July 1939. My grandfather, Stanislaw Margules was a well known engineer and businessman who owned and managed several businesses, and owned several properties. My family, now deceased,attempted for years to receive compensation for his holdings, without success. As the last living heir, I too have been, for years now, attemping to achieve this seemingly imppossible task with no cooperation from the Polish government. It is as if the government has no interest in its native born citizens and would like to see them pass from this world, anonymous, without justice or recognition of any sort. The modern Polish government is building a future society on the backs of the deceased and deserted. It will not work thus. Other nations have taken their responsibilities to the past seriously. Poland which has suffered so much cannot proceed with clear conscience until it has fulfilled its reponsibilities. There are still a few of us left and we ask to be heard and considered. We wish to remember our native country as one of compassion and justice just as we remember our fallen heroes ( my father, Witold Conti, an actor, died serving in the Polish army) and our beloved families. Listen Poland and do not ignore us any longer.