Justice is important, the environment to which justice is done is important,
but the speed, particularly since it's so late in the game, is very important. Justice delayed is justice betrayed to use a worn phrase. So I'm here to ask you to do that which most Jews do -- when you've done somebody a favor, you ask them another.
You've called the hearing. You've helped us time and time again, all of
you. We want to make sure that this job which has begun, help us finish it.

Thank you.

SMITH: Thank you very much, Mr. Singer.

(APPLAUSE)

We appreciate your very passionate remarks and your guidance, and all of
those enclosures that you mentioned earlier will be made a part of the record.

SINGER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SMITH: Mr. Evron?

EVRON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I sincerely appreciate the opportunity that you have afforded me to testify on the important issue of the Polish restitution. I also salute your tremendous leadership in this area.

I'm the president of the Holocaust Restitution Committee, an umbrella
organization in the forefront of fighting for the cause of Polish restitution for Holocaust survivors and their heirs.
The process of property restitution has been critically important to my
family for the past 20 years. My wife lost every member of her family in the carnage of Poland during World War II. All that is left from my wife's family is some tragic memories and her home.

The individuals that our organizations represent are well into their 80s.
Even their heirs are in their 60s. They seek the return of their homes in an environment of fairness and equity. These homes were seized by the Nazis during World War II, during what has come to be known as the Holocaust or the Shoah. These properties have been expropriated by successive communist regimes pursuant to a series of decrees. All of these decrees are still in effect today in Poland.

We expected that a nation like Poland that suffered so much during the Nazi and communist eras would understand the suffering of other people. There are no words to describe the suffering of the Jewish people during the Holocaust. We don't understand why Poland is creating additional suffering by denying our right for our homes.

I have reviewed the transcript of your hearing on March 25, 1999, where
Congressman Smith indicated that the Helsinki Commission has money toward the property restitution of compensation efforts being made by the post-communist countries, and I had to conclude that efforts to return property to former owners have been uneven, and often unsuccessful or worse, discriminatory. I'm here today over three years later to tell you the Polish restitution is indeed uneven, has been unsuccessful and is often discriminatory.

Members of our organization drew the same conclusion as Chairman Smith did and decided to file a class action in the federal court. As you know, this case is now in appeal to the second circuit, but even a favorable resolution of this case may take years to achieve.

Ladies and gentlemen, time is something Holocaust survivors do not have. We need closure now.

The Polish effort to provide property restitution has so far failed. Every single years brings with it news reports that Poland is preparing comprehensive legislation to deal with the property restitution. However, no legislation has been passed to date.
Furthermore, Poland refused to negotiate the resolution for the property restitution on issues with HRC or any of the survivors groups. The passage of 13 years since Poland has achieved democracy without addressing basic human right of ownership is inexcusable. This legislative initiative has failed to garner any support either inside or outside of Poland.

Our analysis of the statute that failed to materialize in 2001 was at best a useless piece of legislation, at the worst a virtual shame. Let me explain why.

First, Poland offered to issue bonds which would not be usable as currency for at least the next 10 years, a lifetime for the survivors and their heirs. Second, only 50 percent of the value of the property would be restituted in form of bonds. Third, the inheritors process that is currently unworkable would be imported into this legislative process. Fourth, and most importantly, any restitution was conditioned upon citizenship and the two-year residency requirement. This automatically rendered the statute discriminatory.

And here I would like to comment and suggest to Mr. Bell. The new law that we hear about is very similar with the same guidelines. If you listen to the Polish foreign minister, he's talking about the new law as a symbolic compensation to the owners. We went to European Union parliament and Mr. Popofsky, the Polish ambassador to the European Union, gave his guidelines of the new law and has the same guidelines. They're talking again about monetary compensations, symbolic compensation.

We survivors lost all of our families. The homes that are left is the only thing left from our family. There is no money in the world that can compensate for this house, and we don't want any money. Besides, Poland doesn't have any money to pay us.

So please, Mr. Bell, before you wait for 2003 to see if we will have another piece of useless legislation, look not only at the timetable, but also what does it say.

Let me give now some case studies related to current obstacles in Poland in recovering properties. Arran had owned two properties in the town Suvalk, Poland. All the documentation was in order. Mr. Arran has his citizenship papers and his proof of ownership. The paperwork was so good that even the Polish court system had to agree. Therefore, on July 4, 2001, Mr. Arran received the decision permitting the return of the property to him. The government of Poland appealed the decision and lost. But the government of Poland didn't give up.

On December 15, 2001, they continued to pursue Mr. Arran and filed papers against him.

This new lawsuit was brought by the Polish locality and it attempts to reconfiscate the property in 2002. This is not 1939. This is not 1948. This is not 1956. This is 2002.
This is the democratic Poland. Reseizing properties that his own court system refuses to allow it to keep.

This is an open violation of the Helsinki Accords. The commission must not allow such confiscations to continue.

Koppenheim, Peter Koppenheim had the property in the town square of
Breslau. After the fall of the communists and over his numerous written objections, the Polish government sold the property to Thyssen-Krup. Poland sold this property even though it had prior notice of the actual and direct Jewish ownership of this property.

These two cases are only a few of the hundreds, if not thousands, of cases where Poland continues to sell on the world market property that should be restituted.

Poland continues to sell, manage and rent thousand upon thousands of private properties.

When the claims are made by the rightful owners, the claimants are stonewalled until they either die or give up.

That is undemocratic, and that is unacceptable.

That is why the chief judge of Eastern District of New York, Judge Edward Korman, said that the dismissal places on the republic of Poland the obligation to resolve equitably the claims placed here.

Poland claims that, if the survivors and their heirs would simply go into the Polish court system, they would be able to secure the return of their homes.

That is simply untrue. Out of thousands of active members, not a single one has been able to secure the return of this property. Our gentle friends with property claims in Poland have faced the same difficulties in the return of their property .

We have many members of the Holocaust Restitution Committee who are not
Jewish, who have suffered the same fate at the hands of Poland over the past 50 years.

We are joined here today by Antoni Feldon, chairman of the Union of the
Former Property Owners in Poland and by Dr. Edward Walata, a leading member of our organization from Boston, Massachusetts.

These people represent the non-Jewish universe of property claimants.

What can the Commission of Security and Cooperation in Europe do in the fate of property restitution? First and foremost, the commission should request the Republic of Poland to enter into discussion with the Holocaust Restitution Committee and all Jewish and non-Jewish organizations interested in this issue.

The Helsinki Commission is the most appropriate body to request the powers in Poland to resolve this problem once and for all. This should be done immediately due to the age of the survivors' population, both Jews and non-Jews.

Justice delayed is justice denied.

The United States government, as represented by the executive branch, and more specifically the State Department can, and should raise the issue of property restitution with Poland at every opportunity.

President Bush is meeting with the Polish president tomorrow -- Thursday.
Congressman Cardin, the Commission, and Senator Schumer have sent letters to the president asking that this issue be raised at the highest level.

Similar letters should be sent by other interested senators and
representatives.

Congressional representatives must raise this issue with the Polish equals at every opportunity. Whenever there are joint meetings being held with members of Eastern Europe delegations, restitution must be on the agenda and must be addressed.

I hope that these measured steps will result in appropriate solutions to the problem of property restitution.

I have also called this a crisis because it is indeed a crisis for Poland as long as Poland refuses to right the wrongs of the past era.

We are glad that Poland is now part of the free world, but Poland has to
remember that the free world protects the basic human right of private property.

One final note, the Holocaust Restitution Committee respectfully suggests that the Helsinki Commission conduct another hearing one year from today to evaluate the success of these various initiatives.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, and ladies and gentleman of the commission, the restitution of property in Poland and elsewhere is an integral part of the need to obtain a measure of justice for the victims of Europe's major two disasters in World War II -- Nazism and communism.

Thank you very much.

SMITH: Thank you Mr. Evron and...

(APPLAUSE)

... appreciate your very, very persuasive and powerful testimony. We will follow this up with additional hearings, probably even before the year deadline, to keep everyone focused. And but your recommendation is a good one. I think you for it.

Mr. Meyer?

MEYER: Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for your invitation to come here and testify today regarding the status of claims by American citizens for restitution of properties that have been abusively seized by the communists in Romania.

I also want to thank Senator Clinton for having suggested that I come here before the commission to address some of these concerns. I hope by the time I finish speaking to you, I will have addressed a specific concern that Commissioner Cardin has raised, and that's for an action plan. I hope, combined with the detailed written testimony that I have submitted and you have kindly placed in the record and the highlights of that testimony, which I'd like to give here orally, we may have that action plan that is supplied to the commission and to Commissioner Cardin.

I would like to point out that I guess unlike other countries in the region, Romania has indeed passed a restitution law. But sadly, before Romania can take pride in real restitution for all of its citizens and former citizens and who are the victims of these communist confiscations, it is going to have to amend the law.

It is my hope and my belief based on the cooperation that the Romanian
government has shown with respect to the extension of the deadlines for the filing of the claim in the first place, which this commission was quite active in and as was the Department of State, and the American Embassy in Bucharest, I'm hopeful that with that same team we will be able to change the various aspects of the law that currently make it unfair for claimants and really unfair for the people of Romania, because it neither satisfies the need of a democratic society not to be built on the stolen property of its people, nor does it satisfy in any way the demands of justice.

Mr. Evron mentioned, in connection with the potential Polish legislation, the fact that they are considering symbolic restitution. Indeed, the Romanian legislation also talks about that possibility, using different terms.

And I would submit to you, ladies and gentlemen, that symbolic compensation is not a compensation of any value to the people who have been the victims of these confiscations. It is in fact another confiscation but one that now arises under Protocol I of the Human Rights Convention, which Romania signed in 1994.

The problem with the Romanian law in essence is that it is too exceptional in the range that it follows for what will be in fact in-kind restitution that will be afforded.

It has so many exceptions to the overall principle that it lists of in-kind restitution that in fact it is not providing very much in the way of in-kind restitution at all.

Instead, it offers restitution in the equivalent. In the case of
residences, it would be cash equivalence. In the case of anything else, ownership of real property -- and I should add to you that we are only talking about real property. The Romanian legislation has yet to focus upon any other personal property -- cash, art, et cetera.

So but in the case of all other property other than residences, it will be in vouchers for yet to be privatized companies. And I would submit to you that, at this point, those vouchers are almost of no value. Not only that, the legislation that's required for -- and the regulations -- that's required to determine the valuations for cash valuations and the legislation required to begin the voucher system hasn't even been passed.

The process itself is so cumbersome with administrative proceedings and the necessity to go through a three-tiered court process that it has created a procedural morass, a bureaucratic meltdown so that even though some claimants have filed as early as a year-and-a-half ago, we have now, according to the government statistics as of July, 188,297 claims that have been filed with the Romanian government for restitution, of which only 2,268 claims have been resolved.

So many of the others cannot even begin to be resolved because those
regulations, that I suggested to you are necessary, have not been implemented.

One example of a problem that an American citizen has had with the
difficulty of the procedures involves a gentleman who had a claim for ownership of a large corporate entity that existed in Transylvania before the war. He filed one claim for the real property that that corporate entity owned.

Well, it turns out, having received later information from the state
archives, that in fact the property that was owned by that corporation consisted of over 200 parcels.
Under Romanian law, he was required to file 200 claims and will be required to process, through the court system, 200 separate litigations for just that one company.

Now this doesn't work for him. It is entirely too costly. And it also
doesn't work for Romania and for the court system.

What is the action plan that I present to you, Commissioner? First, I would urge this commission to urge upon the Romanians to broaden in-kind restitution. That same individual has a claim for his family residence. They were very wealthy people, and they had a beautiful villa in Bucharest. That villa today is occupied by a Latin American ambassador as a residence. The villa is today worth between $6 and $8 million.

But under Romanian law, one of a myriad of exceptions to in-kind restitution prevents that villa from being returned to the family because an exception is for the use -- any property that's being used by an embassy. Also political parties have beautiful villas -- they are excepted.

Now I submit to you that makes no sense under any theory of social
protection. There is no reason why the people of Romania have to pay between $6 and $8 million in a cash restitution for that home.

And in fact, they won't pay it, and we all know that in this room.

What they will pay will be something woefully inadequate. Why? Because Romania is a poor country.

And Romania cannot afford to pay hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, in cash restitution. And that is why Romania must broaden the amount of in-kind restitution that it gives and include in that the opportunity to settle claims through swaps of other land that they own if that kind of in-kind restitution is not available.

And they must come up with a procedure for alternative forms of restitution that are different from cash restitution. And I would submit to you that one such possibility would be long-term bonds.

This way Romania could give the rightful value of what has been taken back to the people from whom it has been taken but not end up with a crisis for a country with so little money and so little resources.

I'm not going to go into what is an eight-point program. I just want to
give you one or two other ideas for procedural changes. I think it's absolutely essential that this commission seek from the Romanian government a commitment that it will quickly issue the regulations that are necessary in order to bring about fair valuations.

And with respect to fair cash equivalence, and as well, fair valuations, I want to point out to you that Law 10 of 2001, which is what I am referring to, provides for cash compensation that may be limited by the parliament.

Again, in my view, that symbolic compensation is again a confiscation. And any reduction in the value of the legitimate sum due is tantamount to another taking of property in violation of the rights of the victims of communism.

I would also ask two other things from the commission, then I will close.

One is that restitution for personal property be included in any amendments to Law 10.

And then I would ask that the commission request of the government of
Romania that it rescind Law 112 of 1995. While it took Romania 11 years to come up with a restitution law, it only took them five years to come up with a law that would allow the tenants of the properties that were seized, not simply to be protected for a period of time as residents and tenants, which is a fair and reasonable endeavor, but to in fact buy those homes.

Law 112 of 1995 provided that people who live in homes stolen from other
people by the communists could actually buy those homes for next to nothing without providing any kind of compensation to the people from whom they were stolen.

In fact, what's happened, although the law required that people live in
those homes for 10 years, what actually happened is that many of them sold those homes at decent profits and in violation of Romanian law. This commission can ask that Romania in those instances at least return those homes to people, if not altogether rescind that law, provide protection for the people who have lived there and give those homes back.

That's my action plan. I hope that all of you will agree that, with respect to Romania, they have at least tried to do something, and now they need our help to make it better and fair.

And one final comment, I would not like to see any of the remarks that I
have made here in any way affect the process of Romania's accession to NATO, which I believe very strongly and very firmly is good for the alliance, is good for NATO and will be good for resolving this problem.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

SMITH: Thank you very much.

(APPLAUSE)

Our final witness, Ms. Jonas?

JONAS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm speaking here about the problems that U.S. citizens have in the Czech Republic.

This is not a new topic. We have talked about this many times before. And it is not a problem just for the U.S. citizens who are concerned -- and most of these people are now aging widows -- but also for the residents of the Czech Republic and for the establishment of the rule of law in the Czech Republic.

So let me start by quoting Secretary of State Colin Powell. This is what he said yesterday. He said, "The hidden architecture of sustainable development is the law, the law, the law. The rule of law permits wonderful things to happen. The rule of law that permits people to be free and to pursue their god given destiny and to reach and the search and to try harder for their country and for their family.

"The rule of law that attracts investment. The rule of law that makes
investment safe.

The rule of law that will make sure that there is no corruption, that will make sure there is justice in a nation that is trying to develop."

Because I really believe in this, and he only said it yesterday, but I
somehow knew it 10 years ago, this is what has motivated me to work on these issues since 1991."

So today, I want to speak about three topics. First a brief overview of the status, not so much of the relevant laws because nothing much has changed in the Czech Republic, but of the Czech government's policy, how it's being implemented and how it shows that there is no rule of law in the Czech Republic.

Second, I want to describe two specific cases that illustrate my general
points. And finally, I also have an action plan, some suggestions of what the U.S. government should do going forward to accelerate justice.

First, the general situation: Since 1990, property has been at the center of changes in the Czech Republic, but only half-hearted attempts were made to allow some of the victims of Nazi and communist era confiscations to apply for the return of some of their properties. Czech legislation governing private property is fraught with restrictions and limitations whose effect has been to unreasonably reduce the amount of property being returned.

Nazi and communist era confiscations are legitimized by the new government, where former communists still occupy key positions both in the executive and in the judicial branches. Over time, and I mean the last 10 years, it has become clear that the Czech government's policy on the return of confiscated properties has one and only one purpose -- I am very sad I have to say this: It is to directly benefit communist and former communist functionaries who have acquired these properties or who hope to inquire them in privatization.

All other reasons that Czech officials have offered to western observers to explain their hesitations in restituting property can be shown to be false. For instance, 10 years ago, Vaclav Klaus and other communist trained economists claimed that returning properties would slow down privatization.

This was a false claim to start with. In privatization, the authorities had to invent mechanisms to identify new owners. These mechanisms turned out to be protracted and highly corrupt. The Czech economy still has not recovered from the asset stripping and other wild East practices.

With restitution, this step could have been largely skipped, and to the extent that there has been restitution, it has resulted in functioning enterprises and much better conditions.

Clearly with restitution, there is an owner, and this owner has the advantage of being the legitimate owner.

This is especially true because of the effect of the Czech law on rehabilitation which was adopted in 1990. As you know, this law annulled communist verdicts ex tunc; that is, as of the date they were pronounced. Through this law, the annulment of ex tunc means that the victims have never ceased to be the legitimate owners, not even for one day.

That is the law in the Czech Republic. They were legally denied use and
enjoyment of their property, and for this, they should receive compensation in addition to the unconditional restoration of registration of their property in the property books.

It is also important to note that the Czech Constitutional Court has issued several rulings to this effect, that the rehabilitated persons never stopped being the legitimate owners, though the de facto owners was somebody else -- first the state and then typically a high nomenclatura servant servant.

However, the lower courts, at the behest of the present government,
systematically prevent the implementation of these rulings, refusing to restore possession to the rightful owners. So this is one more example of the sad fact that the Czech Republic is not yet a state under rule of law.

Among all the restrictions, the most serious are the following: disallowing the return of property to all persons who are not considered Czech citizens by the Czech government, to legal persons and to those victims whose Nazi confiscated assets were to be returned by the 1945 restitution laws but the return was not actually carried out in time before the communist take over.

The policy of the Czech government that denies U.S. citizens the right to apply for return of confiscated property has been deemed to violate the non-discrimination requirement of Article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1995 and again in 1996.

These rulings have the force of constitutional law in the Czech Republic.

The Czech government disregards these rulings as it disregards also repeated requests by the U.S. Government and by the U.S. Helsinki commission to stop discriminating against U.S. citizens. So to this day, the Czech Republic discriminates in the area of fundamental human rights and freedoms and the right of everyone to own property is abused. Now the European Court will consider several cases of U.S. citizens in this regard.

We hope that the Czech government will pay attention. The restoration of the rule of law is not important only for the victims. It is also clear, as Secretary Powell said, that a market economy simply cannot flourish on the basis of property rights that are illegitimate and uncertain, because all of us hope that justice will eventually prevail even against the wishes of the present Czech government.

Just last week, the forum of European businessmen appealed to the Czech
government to improve the investment climate by reducing corruption and improving functioning of the courts.

We hope that the Czech government will take on board this advice.

Now let me tell you about one case, one certainly among hundreds if not
thousands. There were two brothers, Jan and Jaroslav. They inherited their family home in 1946 after their father died. This is a nice villa corresponding to the family's upper middle class status with three apartments and a garden, in a good location near the center of Prague. It's not worth millions though.

In 1953, the Czechoslovak government had Action B against the bourgeoisie.
In a couple of hours, Jan and Jaroslav and their mother were evicted, put on a truck and shipped to a remote village to a house without indoor plumbing. Their mother was not allowed to return to Prague until 1960. This was all solely because of her class status. This was class cleansing implemented by the communist authorities.

The house was taken over by the government housing enterprise, rented out for a pittance, about $50 per month and allowed to deteriorate over the years. When the restitution law was passed in 1991, Jaroslav applied for the return of the house both on his behalf and on behalf of his brother Jan who had escaped to the United States and became a U.S. citizen.

The court did return Jaroslav's half, but it did not return Jan's half
giving as reason that Jan is a U.S. citizen and so is not eligible. So, Jaroslav immediately applied for the return of Jan's half to himself but the court refused again giving as reason that Jan is still alive. This was back in 1992. So Jan then pursued the case in the Czech courts and even appealed, exhausted all the available remedies and appealed to the European
Commission of Human Rights. That was back in 1995.

And I want to quote from the observations of the Government of the Czech
Republic on Application Number 23063, submitted to the European Commission of Human Rights and signed by the director for human rights from the Czech Foreign Ministry, Mr. Rudolf Hejc: "The different treatment of the applicant and his brother may be justified by their different legal status based on different citizenship." So this is the reason for the discrimination.