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Poland and Israel are wrapped up in a growing row by Polish legislation that critics say will make it difficult for Jews to recover lost property during and after World War II.
In 2015, the Polish constitutional court ruled that deadlines should be imposed in the period during which defective administrative decisions, often the target of restitution claims, can be challenged.
On Thursday evening, the lower house of the Polish Parliament passed a bill imposing limits of between 10 and 30 years on some challenges, and got a furious response from Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid.
Lapid called the proposed changes a “direct and painful violation of the rights of Holocaust survivors and their descendants” and said Poland was making a “grave mistake.”
“No law will change history. The new Polish law is a disgrace and will severely damage relations between the two countries, “he wrote on Twitter.” Israel will remain a defensive wall that protects the memory of the Holocaust and the honor of Holocaust survivors. its properties “.
Poland’s Deputy Foreign Minister Pawel Jablonski responded by saying that Lapid’s statement should be “unequivocally denounced”, which presented “ill-will and, above all, a profound lack of knowledge”.
“Poles and Jews were victims of German atrocities during [the second world war]. [The] the law passed in the Sejm parliament protects victims and their heirs from fraud and abuse and implements the 2015 Constitutional Court ruling, ”he wrote on Twitter.
The Jewish community in Poland was once the largest in the world and reached over 3 million on the eve of World War II. But it was almost annihilated by the Nazis after Germany invaded and occupied Poland in 1939.
Restitution claims were effectively blocked during the post-war communist era, but since the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, families who lost their property have sought restitution or compensation.
However, unlike other Central European countries, Poland has not passed a comprehensive restitution law, despite several attempts to do so, and property claims often take years to resolve.
In addition to Israel’s angry reaction, the proposed changes, which have yet to be approved by the Polish Senate and signed by the president, have also received criticism from the US.
Earlier this week, the Polish newspaper Dziennik Gazeta Prawna published an excerpt from a letter sent by Bix Aliu, the US businessman in charge of Warsaw, to the Speaker of the lower house of the Polish Parliament, in which expressed the United States “deep concern” over the bill.
“If approved, [it] it would cause irreparable damage to Holocaust survivors in Poland and their families, ”he wrote.
The U.S. Embassy in Warsaw refused to confirm or deny the contents of the letter.
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