Confiscating “Former” Jewish Property in Poland

In Poland, the handling of confiscated Jewish property overlapped in several ways with developments in the two Germanys, but was refracted through a qualitatively different historical condition. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, the confiscation of Jewish property took place in the western areas along with the seizure of Polish property. In the incorporated territories, the Haupttreuhandstelle Ost (Main Trusteeship for the East, or HTO) was set up to deal with the confiscation of Polish and Jewish property that was used for the resettlement of ethnic Germans and the general benefit of the Third Reich.99 The HTO was charged with

96_{SdBARoV, vol. 7, p. 227, Decision of the Magistrat, 11 March 1958. On the debate see the letters in}

SdBARoV, vol. 7, p. 201-226. See also Spannuth, “Rückerstattung Ost,” 226-231.

97_{BARoV, Nr. 513, City Department of Finance to the GDR Ministry of the Finance, 19 September 1955.} 98 _{The war-damaged synagogue on Oranienburger Straße 28; the Jewish cemetery on Schönhauser Allee}

22-25; the Jewish cemetery on Herbert Baum Straße in Berlin Weißensee; the retirement home on Friedrich Wolff Straße 20-38; the synagogue on Rykestraße 53.

99 _{Andrzej Dmitrzak, Hitlerowskie kontrybucje w okupowanej Polsce 1939-1945 (Poznań: UAM, 1983);}

74

expropriating all Polish private and state property as part of Himmler’s grand designs to Germanize this part of Poland. Although these utopian plans eventually proved impractical and fell to the wayside as Hitler prepared for war against the Soviet Union, they involved the forced deportation of no less than 500,000 Poles and Jews to the “dumping ground” of the Generalgouvernement.100 _{All of those deported — mostly non-Jewish Poles at this point –– lost}

their possessions, homes, businesses, and farms as they were forced to make room for incoming ethnic Germans.

In central Poland, the Nazi seizure of property was much more selectively focused on Jewish possessions. The Nazis took whatever Polish property they needed or desired, but the seizure of Jewish property became linked to the ghettoization and mass murder of Polish Jewry.101 _{In a process that was both regulated and ad hoc, a variety of different owners took over}

Jewish property: some went directly to the Nazi state; some was stolen by German soldiers who were looking for their share of the war loot; some became controlled by Nazi-created trusteeships in Poland; and some fell into the hands of ordinary Poles who took over Jewish belongings left behind. The possibility for confiscating Jewish property came obviously from the German occupiers, but the actual process of identifying and taking it over involved the active participation of numerous Poles. In the GG, the Nazis created trusteeships that included Poles as managers. The Nazis preferred to have either Reichsdeutsche or Volksdeutsche fill these posts, but settled for Poles because they needed someone to do the job. In the Warsaw district, Poles made up no less than thirty percent of the trustees.102 Smaller cities had an even higher percentage not least

(Poznań: Wydaw. Poznańskie, 1979); Czesław Madajczyk, Polityka III Rzeszy w okupowanej Polsce, vol. 1 (Warsaw: PWN, 1970), 509-528.

100 _{Rutherford, Prelude to the Final Solution.}

101 _{Jeanne Dingell, “Property Seizures from Poles and Jews: The Activities of the Haupttreuhandstelle Ost,”}

Confiscation of Jewish Property in Europe, 1933-1945: News Sources and Perspectives (Washington: USHMM, 2003), 33-41.

102_{Raporty Ludwiga Fischera, gubernatora Dystryktu Warszawskiego 1939-1944 (Warsaw: Książka i}

75

because local Polish mayors were often the ones who suggested to the German authorities the names of potential trustees. In the town of Otwock, for instance, only three Germans of 67 applied to manage Jewish property, while in Pruszków not one single German was a trustee.103

Polish participation in the seizure of Jewish property was also at times more direct. In eastern Poland, local Poles simply moved into the homes, apartments, and shops left behind by Jews who were killed on the spot by the Einsatzgruppen or deported to the death camps. In some cases, Jews handed over their possessions to Polish friends, but more often than not those seeking material gain grabbed Jewish property once it became available. “The dregs of society poured out into the city,” Zygmunt Klukowski wrote in his diary, “with their wagons from the countryside as they stood waiting the entire day for the moment when they could start looting. News is coming from all directions about the scandalous behavior of segments of the Polish population who are robbing abandoned Jewish apartments.”104 _{Indeed, the seizure of Jewish property in eastern}

Poland became connected with the participation of some Poles in the persecution and mass murder of the Jews. The plunder of Jewish property was one of the main motivating factors for the wave of pogroms and massacres that erupted in over twenty towns in the Łomża and Białystok regions during the summer of 1941.105

103 _{Jan Grabowski, “Polscy zarządcy powierniczy majątku żydowskiego. Zarys problematyki,” Zagłada}

Żydów no. 1 (2005): 255-56.

104 _{Zygmunt Klukowski, Dziennik z lat okupacji zamojszczyzny 1939-1945 (Lublin: Lubelska Spółdzielnia}

Wydawnicza, 1958), 255. An English translation of this important diary exists, but unfortunately it is abridged.

105_{Machcewicz and Persak, Wokół Jedwabnego, vol. 1, 40. To date, there is no work devoted to the}

seizure of Jewish property in occupied Poland. Any such study would have to delineate between the GG and eastern Poland after 1941 when Jewish property, after having been nationalized by the Soviets, was then seized in four different Nazi administrative spheres (the Białystok district was annexed by Germany, the Lwów district was attached to the GG, and the rest of eastern Poland was administered by the

Commissariat for the Eastern Lands and the Commissariat for Ukraine). For brief sketches, see Grabowski, “Polscy;” Klaus-Peter Friedrich, “Collaboration in a ‘Land without a Quisling:’ Patterns of Cooperation with the Nazi German Occupation Regime in Poland during World War II,” Slavic Review no.4 (2005): 711-746; Gross, Fear, 39-47; Isaiah Trunk, Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation (New York: Stein and Day, 1972), 61-71; Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, rev. ed. (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1985), 239-49.

76

What happened to this confiscated property once the war ended? Were there ever calls from Polish society or moves by the communist-dominated government taking hold in Poland to give Jewish property back to surviving heirs or to Jewish organizations? These questions emerged at a particularly precarious time for Poland. The country was ravaged by war, occupation, and genocide. Numerous Polish cities, industries, roads, and bridges lay in ruins; an astounding five million Polish citizens had died; and the country’s pre-war minorities, once making up one-third of the population, were virtually gone after the Holocaust and the forced removal of Germans, Ukrainians, Lemkos, Belorussians, and Lithuanians.106 _{No other geographic space in Europe with}

the exception of Soviet Ukraine and Belarus experienced such massive destruction and upheaval.107 _{The Nazi seizure of property created a massive, complex problem that was made}

even more complicated in the early postwar years. Poland’s border had shifted nearly 125 miles to the west as 47 percent of its prewar territory in the east became part of the Soviet Union (Poland lost in the end about a sixth of its size after gaining former German territory). As Germans were forced out and Poles were brought in from the lost territories of the east, property was lost and then gained as thousands had to leave their homes and move into new ones. The very idea of rightfully owned property –– including that once belonging to Jews –– was severely undermined in the midst of an unprecedented loss, transfer, destruction, and confiscation of property across Poland. All the while, Polish communists were transforming Poland’s political

106 _{The expulsion of the Germans has received by far the bulk of the attention, so I refer to the useful essays}

by Stainsław Jankowiak, Claudia Kraft, and Bernard Linek in Philipp Ther and Ana Siljak, eds., Redrawing Nations: Ethnic Cleansing in East-Central Europe, 1944-1948 (New York: Oxford, 2000). The transfer of Ukrainians and Lemkos to the Soviet Union from the south-eastern parts of the now newly defined Poland was agreed upon during negotiations for the repatriation of Polish citizens (both Polish and Jewish) who were deported to the Soviet Union during the war. Some Belorussians and Lithuanians living in north- eastern Poland were also forced to leave. See Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Belarus, 1569-1999 (New Haven: Yale, 2004), 187-91; Igor Hałagida, Ukraińcy na zachodnich i północnych ziemiach Polski 1947-1957 (Warsaw: IPN, 2002); Orest Subtelny, “Expulsion, Resettlement, Civil Strife: The Fate of Poland’s Ukrainians, 1944-1947,” in Ther and Siljak, Redrawing, 155-72; the essays in Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej no. 8 (2001): 37-58.

107 _{See Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair; Christian Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde. Die deutsche Wirtschafts- und}

Vernichtungspolitik in Weissrussland 1941 bis 1944 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1999); Lower, Nazi Empire Building.

77

system as they consolidated power between the years of 1944-47. By the late 1940s, Poland was a very different country indeed.

The problem of confiscated Jewish property also emerged at a critical moment in Polish- Jewish history. In June 1946, the Jewish population in Poland reached its postwar height of 240,000 after thousands of Polish Jews returned home from the Soviet Union where they had survived the Holocaust.108 _{By 1949, the number had dropped to around 98,000. A surge of}

violence against Jews caused the massive emigration of Jews. In 1945-46, somewhere between 500 and 1,500 Jews were murdered in villages and towns across Poland.109 _{This outbreak of}

violence had a direct impact on the issue of returning Jewish property. The violence itself stemmed partially from property claims. As Jews came back to Poland and sought what had been stolen from their families, some ethnic Poles physically attacked them in order to dissuade them from reclaiming their possessions.110 _{Moreover, the anti-Jewish hatred diverted much-needed}

attention and resources from the issue of returning Jewish property. As Jewish organizations in Germany were pressing for restitution, those in Poland had to worry first and foremost about security. Poles who expressed public concern about the condition of Jews in Poland –– mostly intellectuals writing in left-wing social and literary journals –– became equally overwhelmed by contemporary events and overlooked the problem of property almost altogether.111 _{There were}

108_{Zarys działalności CKŻP w Polsce za okres od 1 stycznia do 30 czerwca 1946 (Warsaw: CKŻP, 1946).} 109 _{The number of Jews present in Poland, as well as those killed by anti-Jewish violence, is difficult to}

know for certain, but these estimates are probably as reliable as possible. See Albert Stankowski, “Nowe spojrzenie na statystyki dotyczące emigracji Żydów z Polski po 1944 roku,” in Grzegorz Berendt, August Grabski, and Albert Stankowski, eds., Studia z historii Żydów w Polsce po 1945 r. (Warsaw: ŻIH, 2000), 103–51; Engel, “Patterns;” Józef Adelson, “W Polsce zwanej ludową,” in Jerzy Tomaszewski, ed.,

Najnowsze dzieje Żydów w Polsce w zarysie (do 1950 roku) (Warsaw: PWN, 1993). Gross has recently argued that it should be about 1,500. Gross, Fear, 35.

110 _{Gross, Fear; Engel, “Patterns.” Gross makes this argument forcefully, whereas Engel sees property}

disputes as one of many other factors. At the moment, I think Engel’s argument is more compelling because Gross does not put forward any concrete evidence to support this claim.

111 _{Gross, Fear; Joanna Michlic, “The Holocaust and Its Aftermath as Perceived in Poland: Voices of}

Polish Intellectuals, 1945-1947,” in David Bankier, ed., The Jews are Coming Back: The Return of the Jews to Their Countries of Origin after WWII (New York/Jerusalem: Berghahn Books and Yad Vashem, 2005), 206-30.

78

only a few exceptions. One member of the Council for Aid to Jews demanded in 1945 that Polish society “go after at last all of those who took over Jewish property from the hands of the occupiers and made a fortune; for it is precisely they who today are most interested in the extermination of the remaining Jewish survivors.”112 _{But such pleas were rare as those few Poles}

who were interested in working through their fractured relationship with Jews focused more on the on-going problem of antisemitism than with the question of Polish complicity in the Holocaust through such actions as the seizure of Jewish property.113

The anti-Semitic violence in Poland also sent a clear signal to Polish communists about the prevailing mood of society. In a country where the anti-Semitic stereotype of żydokomuna

held particular sway, they quickly realized that any overt association with Jews was politically caustic to say the least. Some communists recognized the needs of the Jewish community, but knew that the costs of offering support were simply too high: fighting for the rights of such a tiny minority group was bound to yield many more political loses than possible gains. As Jan Gross has succinctly put it, most Polish communists were running away from “any putative association between Jews and Communism, which was hurting the Party and which they knew was on the public’s mind.”114 _{Jews in Poland lacked political allies. They had virtually no one who was}

willing to press for their needs in a consistent, sustained, and vigorous manner.115 _{In this sense,}

the political condition of Polish Jews differed from that of Jews in occupied Germany who could at least count on the support of the U.S. military and a handful of politicians from the SPD and

112 _{“Z historii Rady Pomocy Żydom w Polsce,” Dziennik Ludowy September 9, 1945, 3.}

113 _{On the broad issue of Polish complicity in the Holocaust, there were notable exceptions such as Stefan}

Otwinowski’s investigation into denunciation: Otwinowski, “Wspólny los,” Odrodzenie August 12, 1945. But the majority of publications on Polish-Jewish relations immediately after 1945 focused on the broad central issue of antisemitism. See Michlic, “Holocaust.”

114 _{Gross, Fear, 215.}

115 _{On the national level, see Gross, Fear. For the local level, see Daniel Blatman, “The Encounter between}

Jews and Poles in Lublin District after Liberation, 1944-1945,” East European Politics and Societies vol. 20, no. 4 (2006): 598-621.

79

the early SED. This does not mean that, ironically, “Jews were safe among the Germans,” as one author has shortsightedly put it.116 Jews found relative safety and support first and foremost among the occupiers of Germany. Polish Jews did not.117 They were, in effect, abandoned from all sides: the Soviets appeared oblivious to their plight; the communists, even if they wanted to help, were running away from them in their grab for political power; and the major political opposition –– the Polish Peasant Party and the militia bands made up mainly of right-wing groups –– were either generally silent about Jewish matters or embraced an ethnocentric vision of a future Polish state that did not include Jews.118

Indeed, there are perhaps few other issues that reflect Poland’s abandonment of its Jewish population more starkly than the problem of Jewish property. There was simply no social, legal, moral, or political pressure pushing to return it. Part of the reason for this stemmed from the catastrophic condition that Poland found itself in after the war. Almost every Polish family in some way had been directly affected by the occupation and the postwar realignment of the country’s borders. The Nazi seizure of property and the postwar migration left tens of thousands without properties that they had once owned. The entire concept of rightfully owned property had to have been lost on many. But the issue of Jewish property also became entangled in the particularities of Polish-Jewish relations. After the war, Poles viewed individual and communal property as simply “abandoned.” The property was declared, perceived, and believed to be

116 _{“Safe among the Germans” is the title of Ruth Gay’s rather rosy depiction of Jewish life in Germany}

after the Holocaust. Jan Gross’s misplaced use of irony by evoking Gay’s title sets up a flawed and unfortunate dichotomy between Germany and Poland: “… Jews were running away from Poland, fleeing for their lives to, of all places, Germany. Safe Among the Germans –– Ruth Gay’s book about Jewish life in DP camps –– is largely about Polish Jews who fled their mother country after the war.” Gross, Fear, 43.

117 _{I base this conclusion on my research in Polish, German, American, and Israeli archives where I have}

found no documentary evidence to suggest that the Soviets were even remotely concerned about confiscated Jewish property in either Poland or eastern Germany. It is possible that evidence exists in Russian archives that either confirms or complicates this conclusion, but unfortunately requests for access to it were unsuccessful. I wish to kindly thank Adam Fuss for his assistance in Moscow.

118 _{On the illegal opposition, see Andrzej Paczkowski, Zdobycie władzy 1945-1947 (Warsaw: Szkolne i}

Pedagogiczne, 1993), 58; Andrzej Friszke, Opozycja polityczna w PRL 1945-1980 (London: Aneks, 1994), 45-66, and Kersten, Między wyzwoleniem a zniewoleniem. Polska 1944-1956 (London: Aneks, 1993), 28- 36.

80

ownerless and now could rightly be owned by someone else. A new linguistic phrase emerged that justified this confiscation of Jewish space –– mienie pożydowskie. The Polish prefix “po” indicates the leaving behind of something that is now gone; it translates as “formerly Jewish property,” but the sterility of the English does not capture its discursive power in Polish. The phrase reflected and produced a moral economy that justified the wartime and postwar seizure of Jewish property. In March 1946, the Marxist literary journal Odrodzenie republished a poem by the writer Zuzanna Ginczanka that powerfully captured this possession of mienie pożydowskie. Taking as the title a line from one of Horace’s odes about his own eternity, Non omnis moriar

(Not all of me will die), she wrote bitterly and sardonically about what will survive the destruction of Jews like herself –– the material objects that now remain in the hands of those who took them:

Non omnis moriar. My grand estate—

Tablecloth meadows, invincible wardrobe castles, Acres of bed sheets, finely woven linens,

And dresses, colorful dresses—will survive me. I leave no heirs.

So let your hands rummage through Jewish things,

You woman of Chomino, you from Lvov, you mother of a Volksdeutscher. May these things be useful to you and yours,

For you are near and dear to me; no lute playing, no empty words. I am thinking of you, as you, when the Gestapo underlings came, Thought of me, in fact reminded them about me.

So let my friends break out holiday goblets, Celebrate my wake and their wealth: Kilims and tapestries, bowls, candlesticks. Let them drink all night and at daybreak Begin their search for gemstones and gold In sofas, mattresses, blankets and rugs. Oh how the work will burn in their hands! Clumps of horsehair, bunches of sea hay, Clouds of fresh down from pillows and quilts,

Glued on by my blood, will turn their arms into wings,