The controversial draft bill, approved by the Polish lower house would make it harder for Jewish Holocaust survivors to restitute property seized by the Nazis during World War II
Israel’s Foreign Ministry has summoned Poland’s Ambassador Marek Magierowski over a legislation in Warsaw that might prevent Jewish Holocaust victims’ restitution claims.
On Sunday, Alon Bar, head of the Ministry’s strategic-political department, told the Polish envoy that he was “deeply disappointed” by the controversial draft bill that would make it harder for Jewish Holocaust survivors to restitute property seized by the Nazis during World War II, Xinhua news agency reported.
Bar said that according to experts, the bill, approved by the Polish lower house last week, will affect about 90 per cent of the requests by Holocaust survivors or their descendants to recover stolen properties, according to the Ministry.
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In addition, new appeals of administrative decisions made over 30 years ago will also be forbidden.
Bar told Magierowski that “there will be an impact on the relations between the countries and stressed it was not too late for Poland to halt processes that mean a shirking of its obligations, and to return to dialogue on the matter of restoration of property”, it added.
“This is not a historic argument over responsibility for the Holocaust but rather the moral obligation of Poland.”
The Polish Parliament passed the draft bill on June 23 introducing a statute of limitations on claims for the restitution of property.
It is yet to be approved by the Senate before becoming a law.
On June 25, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid slammed the legislation, calling it a “direct and painful blow to the rights of Holocaust survivors and their descendants”, “immoral”, and “a disgrace”, reports Haaretz newspaper.
The Polish foreign ministry has in turn summoned Israel’s charge d’affaires in Warsaw for Monday, deputy foreign minister Pawel Jablonski said on Sunday.
Almost all of Poland’s Jews, about three million people, were wiped out in the Nazi Holocaust. Jewish former property owners and their descendants have been campaigning for compensation from Poland since the fall of communism in 1989.
The legislation would implement a 2015 Constitutional Tribunal ruling that there should be a deadline after which faulty administrative decisions can no longer be challenged. The law sets this deadline at 30 years.
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