Feb. 9



POLAND:

Holocaust restitution sought for Kraft plant----Nazis seized candy factory
from Jewish family in 1939



Kraft Foods entered Poland in the early 1990s, buying a factory that makes
the popular Prince Polo chocolate bar, and today its prosperous plant
employs 250.

But Kraft Foods Polska S.A. has a history: The same facility in the town
of Cieszyn once belonged to a Jewish family, and questions remain about
its ownership in the aftermath of Nazi and communist regimes.

On Thursday, Congress is set to take up the latest chapter in Holocaust
restitution, through hearings before the House Financial Services
Committee on unpaid insurance claims. The testimony, following similar
hearings in October, is expected to focus on Poland, among the few
European nations with no special legal framework addressing Holocaust
claims that amount to billions of dollars.

"Poland is to this day one of the last countries with no restitution or
compensation legislation whatsoever," said Gideon Taylor, a top official
with the Claims Conference, a Holocaust victims' group.

The chocolate factory is not specifically on the agenda for Thursday, but
in many ways it has a typical past, Holocaust advocates say. The Schramek
family lost it when German invaders confiscated Jewish-owned property in
1939. It changed hands again in the late 1940s when the communist
government of Poland nationalized it. Then a new Polish government sold it
to Kraft in 1993, prompting objections from surviving family members,
including one who penned a self-published book, "They Stole Our Chocolate
Factory."

Advocates contend that companies acquiring confiscated assets "certainly
have moral obligations to the former owners," as Taylor put it.

"Kraft should have done due diligence to look at this before they bought
the chocolate factory. There should have been a conversation with the
family," said Sidney Zabludoff, an economist and activist. "If someone
steals something, then you try to [buy] it, you're an accomplice."

In a statement, Kraft maintains it owes nothing to the candy plant's
previous owners: "We purchased the factory directly from the Polish
government in 1993, 45 years after the government had nationalized the
facility. We purchased it in good faith as part of Poland's post-communist
privatization program."

Kraft said the Schrameks challenged the 1948 nationalization, but the
Polish judiciary, including its Supreme Administrative Court, "repeatedly
upheld the legality of the original nationalization."

Family spokeswoman Lynn Schramek of Pittsford, N.Y., said in a brief
interview that "a lot" has happened since 2001, when she self-published
her book on the plant's history. Schramek would not elaborate or respond
to additional requests for comment, and it is unknown if Kraft or Polish
officials have contacted the family recently.

Schramek's book focuses on the memories of her father-in-law, Hans, a
Holocaust survivor who died in 2006 at age 86, public records show.

His father and uncle started a cookiemaking venture in a basement after
graduating from business college in Vienna during the 1920s, according to
published reports. The pair expanded into chocolate, and their factory
employed as many as 500 in three shifts when Germany occupied Cieszyn 69
years ago. A German official bought the facility from the Nazi government
at a steep discount.

Some family members fled, but Hans Schramek remained, interned in a
ghetto, then held in concentration camps. In 1950, he and his mother
migrated to Cleveland, where he worked in the steel industry.

After Poland's communist government collapsed in 1989, Schramek and a
relative hired a Polish attorney to recover family property, reclaiming
the title to a house. Philip Morris, at the time Kraft's parent company,
turned away family inquiries, directing them to the Polish government,
according to a published report in 2001.

Before he died, Hans Schramek told the Cleveland Jewish News he did not
expect compensation from Poland because of the huge scale of its Holocaust
debt: "It would come into the billions of dollars. Poland does not have
that money."

The family's book highlights the scarcity of documents to validate claims,
a common problem in Eastern Europe, a spokesman for the Financial Services
Committee noted. "The further you go east, the poorer the records," he
said.

Taylor, of the Claims Conference, said companies typically had better
paper trails establishing their ownership than certain other property
seized in the Holocaust, such as fine art. Over the years, culpable
parties such as Germany have paid billions of dollars in compensation.

Congress has raised awareness through a series of hearings during the past
decade addressing competing property claims in post-communist Europe.
Successive U.S. administrations have urged Poland, among other new
European democracies, to pass comprehensive laws that do not discriminate
among claimants based on citizenship or ethnicity. A spokeswoman for the
Polish government did not respond to requests for comment.

The issue has taken on urgency in recent years as Holocaust survivors age,
with as many as one-quarter living in poverty, according to testimony in
the October hearings.

As it stands, many owners of lost bank accounts, real estate and insurance
policies -- the subject of Thursday's hearings -- have gone uncompensated,
said Samuel Dubbin, a Holocaust victims' lawyer in Miami.

"I hope the disclosures about the unfinished business about insurance
restitution will rekindle a sense of outrage," Dubbin said.

Before he died, Schramek had a chance to sample Kraft's Prince Polo bar.
He complimented its "very good quality," telling the Cleveland Jewish
News, "They probably still use our recipes."

(source: Chicago Tribune)





UKRAINE:

Ukrainian Television Show Features Holocaust Denier


An interview with the head of a Ukrainian organization called "Historical
Truth" minimized the extent of the Holocaust and referred to Jews as
"kikes", according to UCSJ's Lviv monitor. On February 5, 2008 the Antena
cable channel featured an interview with Kostya Zarudny, who holds a Ph.D.
in history, on the topic of "the distorted history of Ukraine." While the
extent of collaboration by some Ukrainian nationalists with the Nazis is a
tricky subject, made murkier by Soviet era propaganda on the one hand, and
revisionist claims justifying the rehabilitation of Ukrainians who fought
against the USSR on the other, Dr. Zarudny's statements were distinctly
unsubtle.

"We see how the lie of the Holocaust continues in Ukraine, how once again
the fantastic figure of six million is brought out, and that in Ukraine
one and a half million kikes were supposedly killed," he said. "How long
is this kike lie going to brainwash us?" He then went on to mock
eyewitness testimony describing the existence of gas chambers and other
well-documented horrors of the Nazi death camps.

UCSJ's monitor reports that the moderator changed the subject after this
outburst and did not raise it again for the rest of the program.

(source: Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union)





CANADA:

Canada can still redeem itself


On Jan. 27, 1945 the Soviet army marched through the gates of the
Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp liberating the pitiful few that were left
languishing in the camp. More than 60,000 were rounded up before the
Soviet liberation and sent on a forced death march; 15,000 died on the
trek west. On Sunday the United Nations marks Jan. 27 as its time to
honour the victims of the Shoah.

Honouring the victims is important. Fidelity to justice in light of this
monstrous evil though is essential. In this regard, Canada has to date
failed the test. Sixty-two years after the liberation of Auschwitz, Canada
has done little to bring Nazi-era defendants who lied about their past to
justice.

In 1943, when it became obvious to Britain's war leader, Winston
Churchill, that Jews and others were being slaughtered by the Nazis and
their supporters, a pledge was made by the Allies that when the war ended
those guilty of war crimes would be brought to book. "Let those who have
hitherto not imbued their hands with innocent blood beware lest they join
the ranks of the guilty," reads The Moscow Declaration. "For most
assuredly the three Allied powers will pursue them to the uttermost ends
of the earth and will deliver them to their accusers in order that justice
may be done."

It has been almost 65 years since the allied leaders spoke out, and for
Canada this has been a particularly dishonourable period in our judicial
history. It's estimated that more than 1,500 alleged Nazi enablers
illegally entered Canada after the war and found a safe haven within our
borders. For years Canada exercised what can only be described as "wilful
blindness" in dealing with Nazi-era defendants who improperly gained
Canadian citizenship by lying about their past.

Holocaust survivors in Canada have never forgotten the evil they
experienced at the hands of Nazis. And the deaths of those not fortunate
enough to have survived Hitler's "Final Solution" were brutal and
unforgivable.

While the chances of finding and bringing to justice any new Nazi-era
cases have now seemingly passed, there still remains a small opportunity
for Canada to redeem itself. Thankfully, in recent years a few Nazi
enablers have been brought before Canada's courts: Men like Vladimir
Katriuk and Jacob Fast, who were Nazi collaborators; Wasyl Odynsky, Josef
Furman and Jura Skomatchuk, who were guards at SS forced labour camps, and
the likes of Helmut Oberlander, who served as an interpreter for a Nazi
mobile killing unit. All have been found by the Federal Court of Canada to
have lied about their war time activities. All are eligible for
denaturalization and deportation. Yet all still inexplicably remain in
Canada.

The fact that these men are elderly is no reason to shirk our duty to the
victims or our fidelity to justice. We ought not to see them as they are
today, but should remember them as the men they were 60 years ago when
they helped carry out Hitler's madness. To allow their actions to go
unpunished would, indeed, give Nazism a posthumous victory. As the
director of the American Office of Special Investigations charged with
prosecuting Nazi enablers, Eli Rosenbaum, so eloquently stated, "It is
especially cruel to require survivors of the Holocaust and other Nazi
crimes to share their adopted homeland with their former tormentors."

With the realization that the sand in the hourglass has run out, the
Canadian Jewish Congress is shifting its focus on Nazi enablers. We call
on the Canadian government to do the same. Rather than searching for new
cases to pursue, we would like to see all available resources put toward
resolving the six remaining cases expeditiously. There can be no more
delays.

Many see this as primarily a Jewish issue. It is not. It's an issue of
justice.

Moving forward, the CJC will now refocus much of its efforts to assist
other Canadian communities (such as the Darfurian and Rwandan communities)
who have been modern victims of genocide. Clearly the Nazi enablers of
yesterday are the role models for the genocidaires of the 21st century.
Like Oberlander, Fast, Katriuk and the others, they too hope to make
Canada their safe haven. Sadly, some already have. We must ensure no
others do.

In order to give this clear message to future generations, Canada must act
now on the last six Nazi-era defendants. Carrying out their sentences will
send a powerful message that, holding true to the Moscow Declaration of 65
years ago, Canada will see justice finally done.

(source: National Post; Bernie M. Farber is chief executive officer of
the Canadian Jewish Congress--Jan. 26)