Dear Members of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives
Dear Representative of the US Congress:
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Ed Royce, Chairman (California), Eliot Engel, Ranking Member (New York), Chris Smith (New Jersey), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Florida), Dana Rohrabacher (California), Steve Chabot (Ohio), Joe Wilson (South Carolina), Michael McCaul (Texas), Ted Poe (Texas), Darrell Issa (California), Tom Marino (Pennsylvania), Mo Brooks (Alabama), Paul Cook (California), Scott Perry (Pennsylvania), Ron DeSantis (Florida), Mark Meadows (North Carolina), Ted Yoho (Florida), Adam Kinzinger (Illinois), Lee Zeldin (New York), Dan Donovan (New York), Jim Sensenbrenner (Wisconsin), Ann Wagner (Missouri), Brian Mast (Florida), Francis Rooney (Florida), Brian Fitzpatrick (Pennsylvania), Thomas Garrett, Jr. (Virginia), Brad Sherman (California), Gregory Meeks (New York), Albio Sires (New Jersey), Gerry Connolly (Virginia), Ted Deutch (Florida), Karen Bass (California), William R. Keating (Massachusetts), David Cicilline (Rhode Island), Ami Bera (California), Lois Frankel (Florida), Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii), Joaquin Castro (Texas), Robin Kelly (Illinois), Brendan Boyle (Pennsylvania), Dina Titus (Nevada), Norma Torres (California), Brad Schneider (Illinois), Tom Suozzi (New York), Adriano Espaillat (New York), Ted Lieu (California), Barbara Lee (California), John Delaney (Maryland), Andy Biggs (Arkansas), Mark Takano (California), Jackie Walorski (Indiana), Dave Brat (Virginia), Raul Ruiz M.D. (California), Devin Nunez (California), Jared Huffman (California), Jimmy Gomez (California), Tony Cardenas (California), Scott Peters (California), Julia Brownley (California), David Vaqlindo (California)
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Dear Representative of the US Congress,
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Please stop Bills S. 447 and H.R. 1226! Poland, the strongest ally of the United States in continental Europe, is the primary target of these bills. As a country with the largest pre-war population of Jews, Poland is targeted through these bills for “heirless property” restitution claims for billions of dollars by Jewish organizations. This legislation will result in weakening the key US ally in the European Union,thereby will facilitate to drive out the voice of the United States from Europe.
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Please vote against Bills S.447 and H.R.1226 because of the following legal problems:
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1. In WWII Poland suffered the greatest human and material losses but was never compensated these losses.
2. Over the years, Poland has resorted to various means to resolve private and communal property claims, including the return of properties to their rightful owners and monetary compensation.
3. According to the 1960 treaty between the government of the U.S. and Poland regarding claims of nationals of the United States, Poland compensated American nationals whose assets had been nationalized or wrongfully seized and the United States provided indemnity to Poland against any further property claims. Therefore, Bills S. 447 and H.R. 1226 violate the terms of the 1960 bilateral treaty.
4. Poland returned Jewish communal property pursuant to the 1997 law on the relationship between the Polish State and Jewish religious organizations. Over 2,500 communal properties, including synagogues, cemeteries and cultural centers, have been either compensated for or returned.
5. All Jewish Holocaust survivors of Polish origin are eligible to receive monthly pension from the Polish Government according to the law on war veterans and victims of war and post-war oppression. Thus, Holocaust survivors who were Polish citizens during WWII have been receiving financial assistance from the Polish Government regardless of their current place of residence. So, the claim for heirless property compensation in order to assist Holocaust survivors is duplicative with respect to Poland.
6. Restitution for heirless property is against the law of the United States, Western legal tradition and the Polish law. In all Western countries, the US included, heirless property escheats to the state.The introduction of tribal concept precedents to the Western legal tradition may have devastating consequences for the United States and its legal system.
7. According to the Congressional Authority Statement, Bills S. 447 and H.R.1226 are authorized pursuant to the Commerce Clause of Article 1 Section 8 Clause 3 of the Constitution of the United States. The Commerce Clause has nothing to do with these bills, which are based on the legally non-binding Terezin Declaration concerned with the wellbeing of Holocaust survivors.
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I urge you to reject Bills S. 447 and H.R. 1226 on moral grounds for the following reasons:
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1. With respect to heiress property claims, Bills S. 447 and H.R. 1226 have no basis in law. Therefore they must rely on moral justification exclusively.
2. Jewish organizations, Holocaust institutions and scholars have been engaged for years in discrimination of Polish victims and distortion of Holocaust history by diminishing the suffering of Polish victims in WWII, disregarding Polish witnesses to history, marginalizing and suppressing the voice of Polish victims, eliminating ethnic Poles from the definition of Holocaust victims, and sidelining German genocide of ethnic Poles in education of Holocaust.
3. There is no single museum across the USA commemorating millions of Polish victims of the German WWII genocide while there were 75 Holocaust museums worldwide as of 2011.
4. Holocaust scholars and educators have been overemphasizing and widely promoting questionable research and biased education about the Polish co-responsibility for the Holocaust of the Jews, while effectively suppressing the research and education about the Jewish collaboration in killing Jews and Jewish killings of ethnic Poles.
5. Leading Holocaust institutions, scholars and educators have never publicly objected or unequivocally condemned the spread of the major Holocaust falsehoods such as “Polish concentration camps” or “Polish death camps.”Such inactions on their part constitute Holocaust distortion in its pure form and amount to Holocaust denial in accordance with paragraph 5 of the definition of Holocaust denial adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
6. The use of the term “Polish concentration camp” represents cruel and inhumane treatment of millions of Polish people, whose relatives were brutally murdered by the German occupying forces in the concentration and death camps set up and operated by the German Third Reich.
7. Instead of supporting efforts of the Polish people to stop the spread of the horrific Holocaust lies about Polish responsibility for German concentration camps, leading Holocaust authorities engage in brutal smear campaign against Poland by accusing the Polish people, in front of the entire world,of Polish co-responsibility for German crimes committed on the Jews.
8. In order to showcase a moral justification for heirless property claims against Poland, a worldwide smear and disinformation campaign has just been launched under the pretense of opposition to the amendment to anti-defamation bill passed by the Polish Parliament.
9. On January 27, 2018, one of the leading Israeli politicians Yair Lapid announced: “these were Polish death camps and no law will change it.” This terrible Holocaust lie did not warrant the condemnation by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
10. Instead, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum expressed “deep concern” over the adopted legislation, falsely interpreting the law in order to accuse Poland of making it illegal “to reference the complicity of some Poles for crimes against the Jews committed during the Nazi occupation.” Those who resort to such unfair methods have no right to refer to moral justice.
11. According to the Israeli War Crimes Commission less than 0.1% of Poles (mostly Polish Germans) collaborated with Nazi Germany. It means 99.9% of the Polish people DID NOT!
12. During WWII, the Polish Home Army (AK) instituted a law that any Pole collaborating with Germans in persecuting Jews will be sentenced to death. Subsequently, AK held trials of the perpetrators of such crimes and carried out death sentences.
13. Bills S. 447 and H.R. 1226 are morally offensive because they treat the Polish State and the Polish Nation as perpetrators of the German crimes committed on the Jews whereas the Polish people were the victim of German WWII genocide. Poland suffered the most during WWII. Ethnic Poles and ethnic Jews experienced physical destruction like no one else. Through Bills S. 447 and H.R. 1226, one victim frames the other victim as the perpetrator in order to extort compensation in blatant disregard of the historical truth. That is not moral and that is not just.
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I strongly urge you to vote against this legally flawed and immorally insincere Bills S. 447 and H.R. 1226 that cause pain and suffering to the people of Polish descent all over the world,aggravate their genocidal trauma, and violate their human rights.
Yours Sincerely,
**your signature**
