NO COMPENSATION FOR VICTIMS OF JEWISH ATROCITIES UNDER COMMUNIST RULE
Latvian lawmakers
reject Jewish shakedown
Latvian parliament rejects Jewish restitution law
Deutsche Presse-Agentur Thursday, 23 November 2006
RIGA — The Latvian parliament rejected a proposed law on the
restitution of Jewish property on Thursday as the governing parties
that proposed the law abstained.
The government had proposed paying almost 32 million lats
(58.7 million dollars) to Latvia’s Jewish community in compensation
for properties confiscated during the Holocaust® and currently held
by the state. Ministers approved the idea in principle on November 6.
The purpose of the law was to “compensate for the historically unfair
consequences suffered by the Jewish community due to the Nazi
German Holocaust® and Soviet occupation regime.” It proposed
paying the compensation over a 10-year period.
But when the vote was held on Thursday morning, 67 out of 100
MPs — including almost all members of the ruling four-party coalition —
abstained, making it impossible for the law to receive the necessary
majority.
The government’s bill had “no legal grounds” and had not been
discussed properly either with NGOs or within party ranks, the
parliamentary leader of the ruling People’s Party, Maris Kucinskis,
told journalists after the vote.
“We don’t have a clear construction and legal basis for this law,”
added Andris Berzins, parliamentary leader of the Latvia’s First Party
/Latvia’s Way alliance.
However, parties agreed that the rejection was a call for more debate,
rather than a final decision.
“Latvia owns property that belonged to people who died in the
Holocaust®. … We cannot turn away from solving this question,”
Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis told the BNS news agency.
“Abstention can’t last for ever: at some point, a decision has to be
made,” Kucinskis added.
But the decision is likely to be met with dismay in Latvia’s small
Jewish community. Almost 95 per cent of Latvia’s pre-war Jewish
population of 70,000 was killed in the Holocaust®, and the properties
which were confiscated by the Nazis later fell to the Soviet regime,
and thence to the Latvian state.
“This law would return historical and human justice and draw a line
under the tragic events of the twentieth century,” the head of the
Council of Latvian Jewish Groups and Communities, Arkadiy Suharenko,
told the Leta news agency before the vote.
In neighboring Lithuania — a major pre-War center of Jewish life —
a law on the restoration of property has already been passed.
Jewish community leaders were not available for comment immediately
after the vote.
http://www.cjp.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=201150
If I understand right, the claim is that: 1) the German government confiscated, without fair compensation, property of Latvian Jews during its occupation of part of the Soviet Union, 2) the property (presumably real estate) passed to the government of the Soviet Union on Germany’s defeat, 3) the Soviet government didn’t compensate the former owners (Do we know why it didn’t? Did they apply for compensation? Did the Soviet government invoke some law absolving it of liability, or was there some kind of settlement the former owners now consider inadequate, or was their claim successfully disputed by the Soviet government in court?, etc., etc.), 4) the property passed to the Latvian government on the Soviet Union’s dissolution and Latvia’s independence, 5) the Latvian government declines to return the property to the former owners or their heirs, 6) therefore the former owners or their heirs are owed compensation from the Latvian government.
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You’d think this entire question would’ve been settled decades ago while Latvia was under the Soviet Union. There must not be statutes of limitation.
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Hasn’t Germany paid war reparations to the Soviet Union and shouldn’t the Soviet government have paid compensation to these Latvians out of the proceeds of that? What happened, did the Soviets keep it all without paying any compensation to private individuals with claims outstanding for property taken by the Germans, property that reverted to the Soviet government? Weren’t German war reparations payments supposed to go in part to settle those sorts of accounts and debt claims incurred during wartime? Didn’t Moscow set up an office to handle such claims during the 40s, 50s, and 60s? Why is it coming out now, in 2006?
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Weren’t a total of several million German Army POWs and ethnic German civilians from the places earmarked for anti-German ethnic cleansing (all of Prussia’s easternmost lands, Siebenburgen, the Banat, Buchenland, the Baltic Germans, etc.) rounded up after the war, millions of them, and illegally sent to the Soviet Union for forced labor, men, women, children, old people, until they dropped dead of hunger, cold, exhaustion, and disease? Didn’t that happen to millions of innocent Germans and wasn’t that intended as war reparations?
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If so, did the years of forced labor extracted from those POWs and civilians before they all dropped dead have a monetary value, and why weren’t these Latvian Jews paid out of that?
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Now, aside from decades of 1) straight cash payments by Germany in war reparations — payments to the Soviet Union, to Israel, and elsewhere, and aside from 2) the cash equivalent of the forced labor of the millions of POWs and civilians sent illegally to Stalin to be worked to death, didn’t the Allies also 3) dismantle all of Germany’s factories and transport them, lock, stock, and barrel, to the Soviet Union, and 4) confiscate all Germany’s patent rights worth trillions, and wasn’t all of that done to Germany as war reparations?
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How is it that these plaintiffs weren’t compensated before now out of the proceeds of all that, which must have been enormous?
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It would certainly seem money taken from Germany ought to have been earmarked for compensation to these plaintiffs and others in their situation.
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Was their share of the gazillions 1) paid as straight cash by Germany and 2) taken out of its hide in various ways stolen? If it was, how is Latvia now liable?
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I mean, one would presume that Soviet property dating from the 1945 victory, property which devolved upon Latvia in 1991 or whenever Latvia’s independence was, would already have been paid for, or be in the process of being paid for, or already long since judged to have no debt still owing. How is it, exactly, that the ownership status of this property was not yet settled at the time it reverted to Riga some fifteen years ago?
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While we’re on the subject, can the heirs of the twelve million Prussian Germans who were illegally dispossessed of their homes and of all the property they couldn’t carry in a suitcase without compensation after the war’s end (and three million murdered into the bargain) obtain compensation now from Poland, Lithuania, Russia, the U.S.A., and the U.K.?
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Who’s to pay compensation for civilian Prussian property destroyed in the Red Army invasion and for the war crimes and atrocities committed in the course of it, and for that property which was stolen after the war was over? If that outstanding debt was cancelled as war reparations, why didn’t what was owing to these Latvian plaintiffs come out of whoever would have normally been liable for that debt to Prussia?
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Who’s to pay for the one-third of Germany that was stolen and given to Poland, Russia, and Lithuania? Wasn’t the confiscation of that land, totaling the size of, what — five Belgiums? something like that — wasn’t the confiscation of that land justified, in part, as war reparations to be taken out of Germany’s hide? I think it was (the rest of its “justification” being Hans Morgenthau’s genocide project). How much is a piece of Germany the size of five Belgiums worth on the market? You can’t even calculate it. How is it that in 60 years the amount owed these plaintiffs still hasn’t been paid out of the proceeds of the third of the physical nation of Germany that was confiscated in 1945?
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In view of the above and lots more questions I have, I get the feeling there’s something strange going on.
The other thing is, why did these lawmakers abstain? Why didn’t they all show up and vote yea or nay? What were the ones who abstained afraid of? Jewish power? Afraid of other Latvians calling them Nazis? What’s going on? There are tons more questions to be asked, of course.