Holocaust survivors
WARSAW (Reuters) - When Miriam Schmetterling left Poland in 1946, she had no idea if she would ever see her home country again or meet the people who saved her life during the Holocaust.
On Tuesday, the 82-year-old Jewish woman, in Poland for the first time in 60 years, took part in a reunion of 60 Holocaust survivors and their rescuers in Warsaw, in one of the biggest such gatherings in Poland.
She met Jozefa Czekaj-Tracz, who as a 15-year-old Polish girl helped hide her from the Nazis for almost a year. People hiding Jews risked a death penalty under the Nazi occupation.
"She was a little girl then but she already knew that she had to do everything not to let anyone discover the six Jews hiding in her house's attic," Schmetterling told Reuters.
"Jozefa played the piano each time visitors came to make sure they couldn't hear noises which came from the attic. She knew we could have all died."
Jozefa Czekaj's parents took Schmetterling and her family to their house in a town near the city of Lviv, now in Ukraine, to protect them from the Nazis, who invaded the city in 1941.
"Germans were killing people and we knew that is what had to be done," Czekaj said after the meeting. "If I was in the same situation now, I would do it again."
At the start of World War Two, Lviv, with the largest Jewish community in Poland, was controlled by the Soviet Union after a non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin.
Poland had the biggest Jewish population in Europe until the war but the murder of millions in the Holocaust by the occupying Germans and an anti-Semitic campaign by postwar communist authorities left only a few thousand Jews in the country.
Since the end of communism, Polish governments have tried to rebuild relations with the Jewish community overseas and many thousands of Jews visit the land of their parents and grandparents each year.
Many in Poland were incensed by accusations of complicity with the Nazis, who killed 3 million ethnic Poles and razed Warsaw to the ground.
UNRESOLVED PROBLEMS
Polish officials have launched a campaign to remind the world that while some Poles informed on Jews to the Germans in return for money, others risked their own lives to save them.
The biggest single group of the so-called "Righteous Among the Nations" at the Yad Vashem Institute are Poles.
But many issues between Poles and Jews remain unresolved.
On Wednesday, a delegation of Holocaust survivors will meet Polish government officials to press them to compensate them for property confiscated by the communists.
Poland, the biggest post-communist EU member, is the only country from eastern Europe, besides Belarus, which has not enacted a program for the restitution of property seized after the war. Several attempts to solve the issue after 1989 have failed, mostly on grounds of cost.
"It is a matter of fairness and just," Gideon Taylor, Vice President of the Claims Conference, which organized the meeting, told Reuters. "These people are very old and cannot wait. Time is not on our side."
Poland's ruling conservatives have promised to pass a new law to allow some compensation, but many claimants say that a government proposal to compensate only 15 percent of the lost property is inadequate.
On Tuesday, the 82-year-old Jewish woman, in Poland for the first time in 60 years, took part in a reunion of 60 Holocaust survivors and their rescuers in Warsaw, in one of the biggest such gatherings in Poland.
She met Jozefa Czekaj-Tracz, who as a 15-year-old Polish girl helped hide her from the Nazis for almost a year. People hiding Jews risked a death penalty under the Nazi occupation.
"She was a little girl then but she already knew that she had to do everything not to let anyone discover the six Jews hiding in her house's attic," Schmetterling told Reuters.
"Jozefa played the piano each time visitors came to make sure they couldn't hear noises which came from the attic. She knew we could have all died."
Jozefa Czekaj's parents took Schmetterling and her family to their house in a town near the city of Lviv, now in Ukraine, to protect them from the Nazis, who invaded the city in 1941.
"Germans were killing people and we knew that is what had to be done," Czekaj said after the meeting. "If I was in the same situation now, I would do it again."
At the start of World War Two, Lviv, with the largest Jewish community in Poland, was controlled by the Soviet Union after a non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin.
Poland had the biggest Jewish population in Europe until the war but the murder of millions in the Holocaust by the occupying Germans and an anti-Semitic campaign by postwar communist authorities left only a few thousand Jews in the country.
Since the end of communism, Polish governments have tried to rebuild relations with the Jewish community overseas and many thousands of Jews visit the land of their parents and grandparents each year.
Many in Poland were incensed by accusations of complicity with the Nazis, who killed 3 million ethnic Poles and razed Warsaw to the ground.
UNRESOLVED PROBLEMS
Polish officials have launched a campaign to remind the world that while some Poles informed on Jews to the Germans in return for money, others risked their own lives to save them.
The biggest single group of the so-called "Righteous Among the Nations" at the Yad Vashem Institute are Poles.
But many issues between Poles and Jews remain unresolved.
On Wednesday, a delegation of Holocaust survivors will meet Polish government officials to press them to compensate them for property confiscated by the communists.
Poland, the biggest post-communist EU member, is the only country from eastern Europe, besides Belarus, which has not enacted a program for the restitution of property seized after the war. Several attempts to solve the issue after 1989 have failed, mostly on grounds of cost.
"It is a matter of fairness and just," Gideon Taylor, Vice President of the Claims Conference, which organized the meeting, told Reuters. "These people are very old and cannot wait. Time is not on our side."
Poland's ruling conservatives have promised to pass a new law to allow some compensation, but many claimants say that a government proposal to compensate only 15 percent of the lost property is inadequate.
posted by CW at 5:47 AM
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