2: Video testimony, “Murray Pantirer describes the antisemitic climate in postwar Kraków,” 1990.

2: Video testimony, “Murray Pantirer describes the antisemitic climate in postwar Kraków,” 1990.

This video is part of a media essay titled, “The Aftermath of the Holocaust: Personal Histories.” The essay includes fifteen short video clips, from just under a minute up to four minutes long, of various people testifying to different aspects of their lives after the war. Murray Pantirer was born in 1925 and raised in Kraków, Poland. He survived the war as a member of the famed list created by Oskar Schindler, a wealthy German businessman who recruited people to work at his factory in Czechoslovakia. Pantirer was one of seven children, and he was the only member of his immediate family of nine to survive the war. In 1949, he immigrated to the United States.

In this moving video, Pantirer describes returning to his family apartment in Kraków after the war, and finding it was now occupied by a woman unrelated to his family. He tells her “I absolutely don’t want nothin’ from this apartment,” even though everything in the apartment belonged to his family. He says he only wants to leave a note, in case by some “miracle” someone else in his family had also survived, and they could be reunited. Pantirer goes on to describe how he was mistreated by the woman who now occupied his family’s home, as well as others living in the neighborhood who continued to victimize the few Jews who returned to Kraków after the war.

Suggested Activities: Play the video of Murray Pantirer’s testimony for students. In the opening, Pantirer describes walking into his family home. He tells the woman currently living there that he doesn’t want anything from the apartment, but he also tells his audience, “Everything that was in that apartment belonged to us.” Ask students to think about what that experience would have been like. Why would Pantirer say he had no interest in getting anything back from his family’s apartment? Can they imagine feeling the same way in that situation?

Provide students with the following definitions: “Reparations” can refer to money or goods paid after a war by the defeated to the victors, meant as compensation. “Restitution” refers to the return of something that has been lost or stolen to its proper owner. Have students think about what each of these terms might mean in the context of the aftermath of World War II, about the differences between these two types of operations, and about the complications that come with each of them. What arguments can students imagine for, or against, reparations or restitutions to Jews and other victims of Nazi Germany? Given that The Property is the story of a grandmother and granddaughter returning to Poland together, how might the experiences of the children and grandchildren of those directly affected by the war complicate the arguments for and against reparations and restitutions? You might find it useful to refer to an additional brief resource created by Yad Vashem, The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, summarizing the ongoing conversation about reparations and restitutions with regards to Jews and the Holocaust. 

Like Regina in The Property, Murray Pantirer and his family were forced out of their city of birth and left everything behind. Both of them had to deal with the emotional fallout of being exiled, and for both of them, their claims to their family’s “property” is complicated by a variety of factors. In a passage in Modan’s book, also referred to in Resource 1 of this kit, a family friend says of Regina: “I’ve known Regina since I was a child. She swore for years that she would never set foot in this country again. That she’d never give the Poles the satisfaction of thinking she’d forgiven them, just for the money” (35). Why do you think someone in Regina’s situation might not want to go back and claim their parent’s property? Why might they change their mind later in life? Does Murray Pantirer’s testimony shed any additional light on the complex emotional issues surrounding reparations and restitutions?

Source: “Murray Pantirer describes the antisemitic climate in postwar Kraków,” interviewed by Linda G. Kuzmack, Apr. 23 1990, video, 1:34, Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/gallery/the-aftermath-of-the-holocaust-personal-histories?parent=en%2F2275.