13 Summer 2025 I am aware that this lecture cannot resolve the paradox. Therefore, it sets itself a more modest goal: to explore whether the world, to which those released from the camps and those who returned from hiding, sought to alleviate their suffering and rebuild their lives. The lecture focuses on the three years between 1945 and 1948, when, after a brief transitional democratic period, a new Communist dictatorship emerged, claiming the mantle of anti-fascism as its own, and at the same time fully disregarding the tens of thousands living in the country who had returned from the camps just a few years earlier. What awaited the returning survivors in the countries where the Holocaust had wreaked the greatest havoc — Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary — in the nations of the future Soviet bloc in Central and Eastern Europe? Although it was impossible to escape the grief, trauma, and memories of the camps, could the Jews returning from the concentration camps have felt that at least the external conditions for a new beginning in life had been provided by their homeland, now free from fascism and discrimination? Would the country, having defeated fascism, do them justice? Would it offer reparations and compensation for their immeasurable losses, where such reparations and compensation were even conceivable? The question of compensation for Holocaust survivors and the restitution of Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, in the war-ravaged countries of the region, presents a multifaceted challenge, intertwining legal, political, historical, and moral considerations. Of the 5 million Jews living in the area before the war, roughly 1 million survived: just 10 percent of the more than 3 million Jews in Poland, and approximately one-third of the populations in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. The Jews who returned home found themselves thrust into the middle of political conflicts and clashing political interests almost immediately. And they had to realize that political forces cynically co-opted their plight and the broader restitution efforts to serve competing agendas. Initially, the first steps seemed encouraging. In all the countries of the region, governments aligned with the anti-fascist Allied coalition came to power. Among their initial actions were the abolition of racial laws, discriminatory antisemitic measures, restoration of equal rights for citizens, and the legalization of Jewish political organizations. Pre-war Jewish parties in Poland, Zionist organizations in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and other Jewish institutions were allowed to resume activity. Moreover, all three Central European countries issued political declarations, laws, and government decrees aimed at the restitution of communal and personal property. However, what followed quickly cast doubt on whether Jews returning from the camps could ever truly expect to be welcomed as equal members of society. The realities they faced left them wondering if the promises of equality and restitution would ever be fully realized. Early signs emerged that the “democratic coalitions” in power were willing to subordinate the demands of the surviving Jewish community — justice, reparations, and reconstruction — to their own political interests. For Holocaust survivors and their heirs, post-war laws in all the countries in question ostensibly provide for compensation and restitution of lost and expropriated property, as well as the recovery of communal property and property without heirs to support the rebuilding of Jewish communities. However, while these provisions were declared in legal terms, they were rarely implemented in practice and often remained unfulfilled. Edvard Beneš, the head of the Czech government-inexile, had already concluded during the war that full reparation for the persecuted in a war-torn country would be impossible. He openly stated that if there were a conflict between national interests and those of the Jews, the national interests should take priority. And, indeed, survivors and Jewish communities soon faced the harsh reality of systemic neglect and bureaucratic resistance, as the actions of officials often failed to align with the newly enacted laws. They had to realize that their legitimate expectations were ignored in favor of broader national priorities aimed at creating a stable post-war system and satisfying influential segments of society. The following are a few examples: In Czechoslovakia, the issue was particularly acute in Slovakia, where significant areas of formerly Jewish-owned land had been redistributed to poor Slovak peasants. Restitution was rejected by nearly all political forces, spanning the spectrum from the far right to the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. A major conflict also arose over the heirless property accumulated in the Terezín (Theresienstadt) concentration camp, which had previously belonged to Jews who were murdered there. This property, valued at approximately CZK 1 billion, was claimed by Jewish organizations seeking to use it for the reconstruction of the Jewish community. However, the government dismissed these claims, declaring that the property belonged to the state and would be used to reconstruct the republic. The most serious consequence, however, was the package of laws known as the Beneš Decrees. These presidential decrees addressed the status of ethnic Germans and Hungarians, the largest ethnic minorities
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