Les biens appartenant aux Juifs. Démocratie ethnique et Shoah, 1944-1946

Abstract

In the final years of World War II, the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany became widely known in the West. The information, however delayed and fragmentary, reached the exiled representatives of Polish Jewry and the Polish authorities alike, triggering reflections on both sides about the initial implications of the massacre of the nation’s community of three million Jews. One of these implications was the unresolved question of Jewish property, which had seemingly been left heirless in the wake of the mass deaths of Polish Jews. This article examines how the ownership of Jewish property was decided in Poland. Primarily, it discusses the actions of Jewish representatives to the exiled Polish government, especially their initiative, launched in the summer of 1944, to amend the existing Polish inheritance law in light of this unprecedented situation. The initiative lasted merely half a year, apparently thwarted by legislation passed by the Soviet-backed Communist Polish authorities, who had seized power in the recently liberated Polish territories. The January 1945 law on abandoned property pertained not only to Jewish property. In fact, its scope was vastly different than that imagined by the Jewish politicians in exile. It gave pre-war individuals a ten-year window to reclaim their property, after which their rights were transferred to the Polish state. This legal solution conformed to the expectations set forth by the Polish underground and voiced in the underground press. Nevertheless, it did not meet the expectations of Polish Jews.This article seeks to understand the similarities between the exiled and the domestic authorities’ approach to the issue of Jewish property in Poland. It argues that both applied ethnically-oriented policies to Jewish property, in line with the expectations of the Polish society considered in ethnic terms. The actions of Jewish representatives in the exiled Polish institutions concerning Polish legislation constitutes a case of an ethnic minority negotiating its status vis-à-vis the dominating ethnic majority, which meets the model of ethnic democracy (as defined by Sammy Smooha) practiced by the Polish exiled administration during the war. The political takeover by the Polish Communists put an end to ethnic democracy and replaced it with a new Socialist regime. Nonetheless, even though Socialism was introduced to a significantly less heterogeneous society in Poland, the Communist authorities did not shy away from utilizing ethnic policies. The legislation pertaining to abandoned property is a clear case in point.This article contributes to scholarship on the Shoah by drawing attention to how information about the Holocaust reaching the West shaped early reflections about its implications. It thus adds to the understanding of the general dynamics of ethnic minority-ethnic majority relations, particularly in wartime.