Poland Pays For Stalin's Actions
Poland will have to pay thousands of euros in compensation after the European Court of Human Rights accused it of breaking International laws. The case involves a Polish citizen whose property now lies in Ukraine.
This part of Ukraine used to be part of Poland before the end of the second world war. In 1945 millions of ethnic Poles were put on cattle trains and transported westwards to Poland. Some compensation in kind was offered for the houses they left behind, but it was not nearly enough to make up for the losses. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that one of the claimants should receive at least part of the compensation which it says Poland was reluctant to pay.
Millions of Poles had to abandon their property at the end of the Second World War because the country’s borders were shifted westward. The areas in question were annexed by the USSR.The shifting of borders meant that millions of Poles had to leave their homes. Some families received houses in compensation in Poland, but large numbers were just bundled into small flats, in turn abandoned by the fleeing Germans.
For six decades after the end of the war, the Polish state seemed to turn a blind eye on the property of people left behind in what is now Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. But this didn’t stop the Jerzy Broniowski family.
Mr Broniowski argued that he had been inadequately compensated for an estate his grandmother owned before the war in the formerly Polish city of Lwow now in western Ukraine. After a lengthy five year court battle the European Court of Human rights ruled in favor of the claimant for an out of court settlement with Poland valued at roughly 60,000 euros.
Jakub Woloczkiewicz from the legal treaties department of the Polish Foreign Ministry says that Poland has agreed to fork out some 20% of the value of the property.
Polish officials argue that this compensation is in accordance with a newly passed law which offers compensation to those claimants who have lost their fortunes due to post - war border shifts that shifted the border westward to the river Bug.
But what about the restitution of private property in Poland. Polish fortunes which were nationalized or illegally seized by the communists after the war? Few of these have been settled.
Land Restitution expert Jim Yrkowski from TGC corporate lawyers says that the ECHR ruling may open a Pandora’s’ box for thousands of potential claimants who are still waiting for legislation which will provide proper compensation.
But Polish officials disagree with such assumptions.
There are yet another 230 claims advanced by the families of those whose property was lost in the East to be sorted out in the next several months. Under the law those parties found eligible for compensation may be paid in cash or property value.