From Washingtom Post, by Craig Whitlock, Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, May 28, 2006 ...
Landlord's Descendant Makes Deal for Holocaust Memorial
WADOWICE, Poland, May 27 .... As part of a four-day tour of Poland, Benedict XVI came here to see the centuries-old church where his predecessor was baptized, to tour the home where he was born and to raise Polish hopes that John Paul one day will be declared a saint.
....More than 200,000 people annually make pilgrimages to Wadowice to visit the museum, which has been open to the public for more than two decades and contains memorabilia and exhibits about John Paul's early life. Soon, however, the museum will add an exhibit about a less celebrated part of Wadowice's history: the Jews who perished during the Holocaust and World War II.
At the time of John Paul's birth and during his childhood, the house was owned by a Jewish family, the Balamuths, who ran a general store and rented out a few rooms to families. About a quarter of the population of Wadowice in those days was Jewish. The fact that the Balamuths owned one of the largest buildings in town, right next to the church, was a sign of how Jews and Christians got along.
That changed in 1939, when the Nazis invaded Poland and the entire Jewish population of Wadowice fled or was taken to concentration camps. Of the 30 members of the Balamuth clan, only Chaim Balamuth, the 32-year-old son of the man who owned the store, escaped. As German troops marched into town, he and his new wife hopped on a motorcycle and rode all the way to Russia.
After enduring forced labor camps in Russia, Chaim Balamuth emigrated to Israel when the war ended. He remarried and made a new life but could never quite bring himself to sever his ties with Wadowice. For decades, even though the government had confiscated his family's building on the town square, he stubbornly asserted a claim to the property, according to his son, Ron Balamuth, a psychoanalyst in New York.
"The story of my family is like that of many Jewish families in Poland," Ron Balamuth said in a telephone interview. "It is a story of trauma and loss and displacement."
After his parents died in Israel, Ron Balamuth took over the family's quest to regain the building. The end of the Cold War provided a legal opening for Jews and other Poles to receive restitution for stolen or confiscated property. But the town of Wadowice and church officials, having turned the building into a museum honoring John Paul, were not eager to relinquish control.
...A breakthrough came in 1999, on a visit by John Paul. In an address to a crowd of Poles, he recalled living in the Balamuths' building and said kind words about Ron Balamuth's grandfather....The public recognition by the pope immediately boosted the Balamuth family's attempts to reclaim the property. In 2000, they secured title to the building.
....Afterward, Ron Balamuth said, he approached Polish church officials with an offer to sell back the building, on the condition that the papal museum be preserved and that it also include a memorial to Jews who perished during the Holocaust. The church balked at the offer, and negotiations stalled for several years.
Last year, however, church officials showed renewed interest after Balamuth came close to selling to another buyer. In March, a Polish businessman bought the house on behalf of the church, agreeing to the stipulation that the property honor both John Paul and the Jews of Wadowice. "This family home of our greatest Pole belongs to Poland and all its countrymen," the businessman, Ryszard Krauze, said in a statement after the sale was finalized.
Terms of the sale were not disclosed, but Balamuth said he was pleased with the outcome.
"I had a vision for the house as a memorial of Jewish-Catholic friendship," he said. "It speaks to the potential of the place and its history as a symbol of what was good between Jews and Catholics."
The people of Wadowice also seem happy that the property will be preserved. On Saturday, as the crowd waited for Benedict to appear, people cheered when it was announced that Krauze was present for the ceremony and that the new pope would enter and bless the house.
"I think it's an extraordinary idea," said Ewa Kadzioka, 43, who came to the square at dawn with her four children to wait for the pope. "The people of Wadowice are very proud and happy about this."
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