US will not punish Poland over Holocaust victim's assets - press

Three weeks before US President Donald Trump's visit to Poland, 88 out of 100 US senators appealed to Poland to return the property of Holocaust victims, though Washington is not planning to impose sanctions, the Rzeczpospolita daily wrote on Wednesday.

The paper wrote that not only is the content of the text, intended to mobilise Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, significant, but also the list of senators that signed it. It includes candidates from the previous presidential electoral race like Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders, advocates of a frim foreign policy such as Lindsey Graham and isolationists like Rand Paul. There are also the heads of the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committees, on which the financing for the 'Fort Trump' project depends.

However, US sources told Rzeczpospolita that the Trump administration has no plans to take any concrete action against Poland over the matter.

"It is a sort of appeal to the national conscience," according to the paper's sources. "It is related to a report which the State Department has to prepare by November in line with the Terezin Declaration of 2009. They have to assess what 46 countries have done on the issue, including Poland." The Terezin Declaration is a non-binding declaration issued by 47 countries in June 2009, agreeing on measures to right economic wrongs that accompanied the Holocaust against the Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution in Europe.

The paper's sources said the matter was not related to key issues of Polish-US relations such as the increased US military presence in Poland or the visa waiver programme.

Representatives of the Polish government who requested anonymity told the paper the issue of Holocaust restitution had not been raised in talks between the two countries' presidents and is not on Trump's agenda for talks during his September visit.

The paper wrote that Poland does not want to make restitution to Holocaust survivors except as a symbolic gesture.