GHOSTS OF THE PAST FOR FREE

The Polish government continuously refused to return his property. Following the fall of communism, he made numerous efforts to reclaim his property, including filing a petition to the European Court on Human Rights, after finding himself listed as a property owner in the city land records. He survived, together with his brother and father, Maks. Henryk fled Lodz in 1939, aged 11, while his grandfather who stayed behind died in the Warsaw ghettoДЄnd mother was murdered in the Stutthof concentration camp. The case of Holocaust survivor Henryk Pikielny, whose grandfather, Mojzesz, founded a small textile factory on Jaracza Street in the city of Lodz, appropriated by the Nazis, is a case in this respect. While the Polish government is procrastinating over this issue, claimants die or give up. According to the National Bank of Poland, the inflow of foreign direct investment between January and October 2011 amounted to more than 9 billion euros, 34% more than in the whole of 2010, and more than enough to pay its historical dues to the dispossessed if financial resources had been directed their way.Д«y its failure to pass legislation, Poland has been telling elderly Holocaust survivors вЂ“ who in their twilight years need the means to cope with the problems of poverty and old age вЂ“ that they have no foreseeable hope of a small measure of justice for the assets that were seized from them. Poland is one of few EU Member States which have avoided the current European recession with a 4.3% GDP growth last year. This argument bears little relevance given that Poland's economy is a European success story, with consistent economic growth. This year draft restitution legislation was again dropped, on the ground that the country could not afford compensation. Over the last 20 years, more than 12 draft laws providing for restitution have been prepared in Poland but never enacted. Lithuania and Hungary have recently taken some legislative steps to do justice, leaving Poland isolated in an international and European context. Poland's reputation as a force for moral good would be enhanced by reaching a just settlement, acceptable to all parties, on the issue of restitution of private property seized from Polish Jews. Today, 70 years after the end of the war and the liberation of the extermination camps, and more than two decades since the fall of the Iron Curtain, the issue of restitution still constitutes a blot on Poland's democratic record. The trauma of human loss during the Second World War was so great that no discussion of the material loss took place for decades.

GHOSTS OF THE PAST FOR FREE

Since regaining its independence in 1989, joining NATO and entering the European Union, Poland has established itself as a model for free and democratic states in Eastern Europe and throughout the world. Poland was one of the main victims of Nazi Germany, and six million of its citizens вЂ“ half of them Jews вЂ“ were murdered by the Germans.

Spanning two centuries, Ghosts of the Past is based on a true story.Nazis' descendents march with Holocaust survivors Nick and Anja head to Africa on the trail of a legend, but someone else is delving into the past, looking for clues to the secret location of a missing horde of gold that's worth killing for. She's also interested in Blake and an Irish-German firebrand and spy, Claire Martin, with whom Cyril had an affair. In Germany, historian Anja Berghoff is researching the origins of the famed desert horses of Namibia. Soldier, deserter, cattle rustler and freedom fighter, Blake was helping the lost cause before the Kaiser's forces ordered his assassination. Susan is chasing information about Nick's great-great uncle, Cyril Blake, who fought in the Anglo-Boer War and later joined the struggle for independence across the border in the German colony of South West Africa, now Namibia.ДЄ long-lost manuscript proves Nick's forebear was a somewhat reluctant hero. Sydney, the present: journalist Nick Eatwell has just lost his job, but his day is brightened when a fellow reporter, South African Susan Vidler, comes into his life looking for help with a story. Africa, 1906: A young Australian adventurer is condemned to death.

Ghosts of the past