The threat of two N.Y. State legislators to push for a denial of landing rights at Kennedy International Airport for LOT Polish Airlines at Kennedy International Airport drew a sharp rebuke from the N.Y. Polish American Congress.

Michael Preisler, co-chair of the organization's Holocaust Documentation Committee and an Auschwitz survivor, urged the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey not to "succumb to political pressure that is so illogical and so unjust." The Port Authority is the agency which operates JFK.

In a press conference held in front of LOT's N.Y. City office, Assemblymen Dov Hikind and Jeffrey Klein asked the Authority to revoke the lease that allows LOT to use JFK. The two Democrats used the occasion to publicize and support a class action lawsuit in a Brooklyn court on behalf of Jewish claims to property in Poland confiscated by Nazis and Communists a half-century ago.

What upset Preisler so much was the way the legislators tried to accuse Poland as a country which violates human rights and their denigration of Polish people as anti-Semites who deserve to have the Port Authority punish them. After a spokesman for the agency was quoted as saying he wanted to speak to the politicians to "learn more," Preisler told him he "would like to alert you that the misrepresentations they made to the press about Poland suggest they may be just as dishonest in any discussions with you."

Sensing this Port Authority official was poorly informed about Poland, Preisler listed some basic facts. "For fifty years--from the time Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded and plundered Poland in 1939 until Communism collapsed in 1989--Poland ceased to exist as a free country. It was physically destroyed and suffered more than any other victim of these two tyrannical forces. Six million Polish citizens--three million Polish Jews and three million Polish Christians--were killed during the Holocaust years. Poland's economy the Communists left in shambles is painfully attempting to emerge from all the devastation it endured. As a nation, Poland is a true Holocaust survivor."

Poland has already begun returning communal Jewish property and is in the process of drafting whatever private property legislation could be possible under current economic difficulties. When the president of Poland vetoed a proposed restitution bill, in March, it was because he wanted something more generous for Jews. The two Assemblymen, on the other hand, paid no need to the reason for his veto and characterized the absence of an immediate resolution as "more evidence of Polish anti-Semitism."

"The fact Polish Christians like me shared the Holocaust tragedy with the Jews of Poland clearly is of no significance to them. On the contrary, they even told the press that the members of a Nazi German death squad were more compassionate than the residents of a Polish village who are now being accused of a 1941 atrocity about which the evidence is still inconclusive," said an angry Preisler. It was in 1941 that the Gestapo arrested him and sent him to Auschwitz. For Preisler, Hiking's and Klein's agenda is clear. "It is to demonize Poland and damage its favorable image as the first to fight Hitler and the moral force which precipitated the eventual downfall of Communism. That they are taking the lead in conducting a 'Hate Poland' campaign has become obvious."

Preisler expressed concern the "Hate Poland" campaign looks like it is slowly turning into a "Hurt Poland" campaign. He recalled how a local TV Rabbi who called Pope John Paul II "a dumb Polack" and "a stinking old cocker" recently urged Jewish employers not to hire anyone Polish and called for an anti-Polish boycott by Jewish doctors, dentists, lawyers and CPA's.

A copy of the Polish American Congress statement was given to the governors of New York and New Jersey who have jurisdiction over the Port Authority.

, Polish American Congress, 0000-00-00

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