Daniel Kawczynski, the first British MP born in Poland, sends a letter to 88 US Senators
The office of Daniel Kawczynski, a British Conservative Party politician and Member of Parliament has shared with Polish Media Issues one of the letters that he sent to the 88 US Senators who lobby for the extra-legal “restitution of heirless property,” i.e. transfer of the property of Polish Jews who perished during the Second World War without leaving heirs.
The 88 members of the US Senate, under the leaderships of Tammy Baldwin from Wisconsin and Marco Rubio from Florida, did nothing to restore justice for ethnic Polish victims of Nazi Germany. However, they lobby for US organizations like the World Jewish Restitution Organization which usurp the right to represent Polish Jews and which demand an illegal transfer or compensation of the “heirless property” of Polish citizens. Actually, this property is not “heirless,” as the heirless property – subject to international legal standards – always escheats to the state. On the other hand, the American citizens whose property was wrongfully seized by Polish communists after the war, had already been compensated on the basis of the 1960 treaty between Poland and the USA.
The letter of 88 US Senators is a hostile move just 3 weeks ahead of president Trump’s visit to Warsaw commemorating the 80th anniversary of German invasion on Poland and the outbreak of the Second World War. The letter is also a further consequence of the unconstitutional Act S. 447. Act S.447 enacted by the U.S. Congress in April of 2018 and signed into law by President Donald Trump, while looking superficially innocuous, tries to legitimize these extra-legal claims put forth by the restitution organizations. They amount to nothing less than extortion attempts as all the properties left heirless, regardless of ethnic or religious background of deceased owners, properly and legally became the property of the Polish state after WWII. The above happened in accordance with the existing law, universally accepted legal principles and millennia-old legal traditions prevalent in the western civilization.
Kawczynski left Poland, age 6, with his family in 1978, escaping communist Poland. He has been an MP for 14 years. His great uncle and his family were killed by Germans for hiding Polish Jews.