Jewish leader urges Poland to compensate victims of Holocaust, communism

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Ronald Lauder, president of the New York-based World Jewish Congress, on Tuesday urged Poland to redress what he described as one of the thorniest problems still weighing on Polish-Jewish relations - Warsaw's failure to compensate Jews for property seized during the Nazi and communist eras. Lauder called on the Polish government to enact urgently a compensation law that has been in the pipeline for years for people - Jews and others - who were deprived of property. He made his appeal in an article published in the daily Rzeczpospolita, a day before he is to meet with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk to discuss the matter. "One of the thorniest problems with Poland concerns restitution of properties that were seized during the German occupation and later during the communist era," Lauder argued in the article, the original English version of which was supplied by the World Jewish Congress.