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The Polish Files of the Foreign Claims Settlement

Commission (FCSC)

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One of the most significant discoveries of my career happened, like most significant discoveries, by chance. While doing some research at the USHMM I came across a 1960 document referring to the possibility of submitting claims to assets in Eastern Europe lost due to nationalization. At first, I found it difficult to believe: in the midst of the Cold War there is an agreement between the Communist Bloc and the USA (and, as I discovered later, also other Western countries) which transfers millions of dollars between sworn enemies?

 

The very next day I found myself in the reading room of the National Archives at College Park researching the RG 299 (Records of the FCSC). And indeed, the countries of the Communist Bloc put at the disposal of the US government lump sums of money (in case of Poland it was $20M) which the FCSC then distributed among US citizens whose claims were approved. The Communist countries also enabled the US authorities to obtain information from local archives, courts and offices which was essential in order to process incoming claims. 

 

The largest number of claims, some 10,000, referred to assets in Poland, majority of which were submitted by Polish Jews who emigrated to the US and became US citizens. As usual, not all the claims are of the same value from the genealogical point of view but whenever the claimant was not the only owner of, or heir to the asset in question, he or she had to show who were the other co-owners and what happened to them. Thus, some claims include family charts, vital records, information about living relatives, etc.

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A good example of such a case is the claim submitted by two brothers from New York, Kalman and Samuel Wachtelkonig. Their claim, which referred to real estate in the Polish town of Leżajsk, included the following family chart:

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