U.S. Holds Lost Land of Polish ‘Spy’

Lost property in Eastern Europe extends beyond the crimes committed against Jews during World War II.

Hundreds of thousands of properties belonging to non-Jews were taken during the 1940s and 1950s by Communist rulers who opposed most forms of private ownership.

Since the democratic changes of 1989, struggles to get back confiscated real estate have met with mixed results. The Czech and Slovak republics moved quickly to return thousands of homes and businesses. In Poland, no restitution law exists, and the process remains painfully slow.

For the Czetwertynski family of the Polish nobility, there has been an unlikely added complication: Uncle Sam.

During the 1950s, while Stanislaw Czetwertynski was behind bars on disputed charges of spying for the United States, the Communists sold his elegant Warsaw mansion to the U.S. government.

For nearly 40 years, the Czetwertynski estate has been home to the U.S. Embassy. And despite repeated pleas from the Czetwertynskis, the Americans have no intention of giving it back.

“This is a matter between the family and government of Poland,” said an embassy spokesman. “We regret the family’s continuing, understandable anguish over this deeply felt issue, but their quarrel is with the government of Poland, not that of the United States.”

That is true, say the Czetwertynskis, but not the whole truth. Although the family accepts that Polish authorities confiscated the property, they insist the Americans have a moral obligation to reimburse the family for its loss. The Czetwertynskis say the Americans knew that the estate was “stolen” and never should have accepted it.

“Everyone knew it belonged to the Czetwertynskis--it was impossible not to know,” said Barbara Nasierowska, 73, a retired embassy employee. “So many people working there were saying how sorry they were about what was happening, but it was being presented as payment for Polish debt.”

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According to family research, the Americans got the estate in 1956 in exchange for $40,000 in canceled Polish war obligations. At the time, the Polish government estimated its worth at $325,000; today the land alone is appraised at $2.5 million.

Taking into account the property’s prime location and four decades of forfeited rent, the Czetwertynskis figure, they have been shortchanged tens of millions of dollars.

“For us, Americans always meant freedom; they were fantastic and always on the right side,” said Albert Czetwertynski, a Warsaw businessman who has taken up the family cause for his elderly father, a survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp who now lives in Canada.

The family is particularly distressed that the Americans demolished the distinctive 19th century mansion built by Albert Czetwertynski’s grandparents.

In the early 1960s, the Americans erected a five-story chancery on the site, now considered one of the ugliest buildings in a city dominated by ugly Communist-era architecture.

Demolition of the mansion could have more than aesthetic significance. Lawyers for the Czetwertynskis allege that Communist authorities broke their own laws in selling the family property, making it a candidate for restitution under legislation now being considered by the Polish Parliament.

But because the proposed legislation would allow the return of illegally confiscated structures but not the land beneath them, the Czetwertynskis would once again be left empty-handed.