Holocaust survivors ask Poland for compensation

WARSAW, Feb 28 (Reuters) Holocaust survivors from around the world pressed Poland's government today to compensate them for property confiscated by the former communist regime.

Poland, the biggest post-communist European Union member, is the only country from eastern Europe, besides Belarus, which has not enacted a programme for the restitution of property seized after World War Two.

Attempts to solve the issue after the collapse of communism in 1989 have failed, mostly due to concern over the likely cost.

''When you've taken something away from someone, you should give it back, period,'' Israel Singer, President of the Claims Conference, said following meetings with Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Speaker of Parliament Marek Jurek.

''You don't ask the person's religion, you don't ask the person's race, you don't ask the person's creed, you just give it back. That's what we're here to ask the government to do.'' Poland had Europe's biggest Jewish community until World War Two, when the Nazis killed nearly 90 percent of the country's 3.3 million Jews. The post-war communist rulers seized their property as well as that of people who left or fled the country.

Poland's ruling conservatives have promised to resolve the issue and pass relevant legislation in coming months. But the government proposal envisages compensation for only 15 percent of the property lost.

Neither Kaczynski nor Jurek commented publicly after the meetings.

Polish officials estimate total claims for pre-war real estate and other property amount to at least 20 billion dollars.

Germans who were displaced from Poland after the war and other groups are also seeking compensation.

Singer said the government was free to make offers based on what it thought it could afford but his group hoped the eventual compensation offered ''won't be too much less than 100 percent''.

''We think we've started a process that over time will lead to some survivors getting actual property back and others getting (compensation),'' he told a news conference.

Relations between Poles and Jews were damaged by an anti-Semitic campaign conducted by the communist authorities in 1968 when most of the 300,000 Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust left the country.

Relations have improved since the end of communism, with the authorities trying to counter Poland's reputation for anti-Semitism.

The country now has strong ties with Israel and is a close ally of the United States.

''I think the Jewish owners deserve the right to live in these houses if it's still possible, especially considering what they went through,'' said a Pole who lives near a dilapidated Warsaw apartment building once owned by Jews who gave only his first name, Waldemar.

''After all, the buildings belong to them.'' REUTERS DH RN0145