Petro Lopata
In his first trip to North America, Stefan Hladyk had a two week stay in Toronto. On February 10, he addressing a crowd of some 300 at the Zoloty Lev restaurant describing his 12 year battle for the return of his land, forcibly confiscated by a Polish government decree of 1949.Poland, recently accepted into NATO, on the fast track for entry into the EU, and with a population of 40,000,000 is increasingly finding itself in a situation that bears some parallels to the First Nations’ land claims in Canada.
The groundbreaking case of Stephan Hladyk, who October 1, 2001 emerged victorious in a historic settlement that will see his ancestral property returned to his posession sets a precedent many in Poland consider dangerous. Hladyk is not the only individual who could lay a similar claim before the Polish courts, as some 150,000 Ukrainians were deported from their native Lemkivschyna in southeastern Poland during the government sanctioned military “Operation Wisla” of 1947.
On the 50th anniversary of the 1949 decree, Hladyk applied to the Polish authorities requesting it be repealed. Finally, last year, the Supreme Administrative Court rejected an appeal by Poland’s State Forests, thus granting Hladyk the return of his 11 hectare plot of land. At present, over 200 individuals have applied to have their property returned.