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Russian Embassy in Prague Reclaimed
Lisbeth Popper, daughter of influential prewar Czech banker Jiri Popper has filed suit in Prague city court against the Czech Republic and Russia demanding the return of her family home on its 9000-m. lot in the prestigious Bubenec neighborhood of the city. In 1945, the land and house were given by Czechoslovakian president Edvard Benes to the government of the Soviet Union. The Soviet, and then Russian, Embassy has been located there ever since. Lisbeth Popper is also demanding compensation of 1 billion Czech krones (about $66 million).
he Popper family lost its property in Prague on March 16, 1939, when Germany occupied the Czechoslovakia. There house was Gestapo headquarters in Prague for the next six years. Jiri Popper and Benes, who were well acquainted, fled to London on the same plane. After the war, Benes gave away Popper’s house, even though he knew that he had survived and intended to return to the country. The Popper family was to receive compensation for the property, but the installation of a communist government in 1948 put an end to those plans.
A Czech law passed in 1990 offers restitution for property confiscated after the revolution of 1948. The Czech Constitutional Court has reversed some of the laws of the postwar Benes government in recent months. The press secretary for the Czech Ministry of Finance has stated that it will be impossible to return the property to the Popper family, however. The house has changes little since 1939, although former ambassador Nikolay Ryabov built a church on the grounds in the late 1990s.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of July 07, 2008
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