- BERLIN -- A German drive
to repossess thousands of Third Reich-era properties confiscated by Poland
after the Second World War threatens to provoke a blistering row between
Berlin and Warsaw, and to overshadow Polish accession to the EU.
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- More than nine million Germans were expelled from the
territories of Pomerania, Silesia and Prussia - ceded to Poland in 1945
- and their homes seized by Warsaw's communist authorities.
-
- Now, as Poland prepares to join the EU on May 1, a new
German organisation has launched a bid to repossess an estimated 30,000
"illegally confiscated" properties through the European Court
of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
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- Rudi Pawelka, a spokesman for the Prussian Claims Society,
which is leading the repossession attempt from its base in Dusseldorf,
told The Telegraph: "Germans held lands and properties in what is
now Poland for hundreds of years. They have a deep, inner connection to
the region and many want their properties back.
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- "Soon we will all be Europeans. Poland's accession
to the EU will enable us to take our case to the Strasbourg court for the
first time. Poland must not be allowed to discriminate against Germans."
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- The organisation plans to model its court case on class
action suits filed by the Jewish Claims Conference, which secured millions
in financial compensation from Germany for victims of the Holocaust. The
society claims to receive 30 inquiries a week from dispossessed Germans.
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- The attempt to launch German property claims in Poland
has acutely embarrassed Chancellor Schrder's Social Democrat-led administration,
which is seeking to improve relations with Warsaw before EU enlargement.
The German government regards any analogy with Jewish compensation claims
as "very distasteful".
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- In Poland, the campaign has touched a raw nerve. Poles
point out that they were forced to cede parts of eastern Poland to Russia
under agreements struck between Britain, America and the Soviet Union at
the end of the Second World War - and that land from Germany was in compensation.
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- One Polish weekly news magazine, Wprost, described the
restitution bid as "German legal aggression" and Lech Kaczynski,
the mayor of Warsaw, declared that if the former landowners pressed their
claim, the Polish capital would retaliate with a a Ä24.6 billion (£16.7
billion) counter-claim for damage caused by German troops.
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- "It is worrying enough to think of Germans just
buying land in Poland," said Maciej Giertych, an MP for the League
of Polish Families Party. "Many farmers would be forced to leave the
land."
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- Polish municipalities have begun a rapid sale of publicly
owned properties, calculating that German restitution claims are less likely
to succeed if properties are in private hands. In the port city of Szczecin
(formerly German Stettin), city authorities are offering tenants of former
German properties the chance to buy them at 10 per cent of market value.
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- The repossession threat has angered Poles who have acquired
and developed former German property. Piotr Nowakowski, 55, a Polish businessman,
completely restored an idyllic former German country house near the western
city of Gorzow.
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- He was shocked to discover that the former German owner
of the house, whose advice he had frequently sought during the renovation,
is a leading member of the Prussian Claims Society. "We don't want
to see him here again," Mr Nowakowski said. "He is a Trojan horse
and persona non grata."
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.
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- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news
- /2004/02/15/wger15.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/02/15/ixworld.html
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