THE OBSERVER: Daughter of Holocaust survivor pledges to continue her fight for family property seized by Nazi occupiers
A few years ago, Shoshana Greenberg stood outside a building in Lodz, Poland, once owned by her family, with an old photograph in her hands and tears running down her face.
Greenberg, now 74 and living in Tel Aviv, was on a quest to reclaim property lost during the Holocaust. Her father was head of a prominent, wealthy Jewish family in Lodz that owned industrial buildings, residential homes and holiday properties.
When the Nazis came, the property was confiscated along with the family jewellery. They were forced into the Lodz ghetto. Later, Greenberg’s father and his siblings were sent to Auschwitz, and only her father survived. After the war, the new communist government in Poland nationalised property that had been confiscated while destitute Holocaust survivors rebuilt their lives from scratch elsewhere.
Since the fall of communist Europe in 1989, most countries in the former Soviet bloc have taken steps to provide restitution and compensation to their pre-war Jewish citizens. Poland is the only major country that has not implemented such a programme – and now it is on the verge of making recompense even harder. » | Harriet Sherwood | Sunday, August 1, 2021
