Israel and Poland trade barbs over Holocaust claims ban
Against that background, the Polish parliament’s approval last week of a law that effectively blocks Holocaust-era claims was heavily criticized by the US and Israel. The vehemence of Israel’s language in particular threaten to send relations between the two countries into a deep freeze. Five takeaways.
The law approved by President Andrzej Duda sets a 30-year limit on legal challenges to restitution claims, of which there are many besides the Holocaust. Post-World War II, the Polish Communist government nationalized private property, and the new law affects claims on those properties, which are a majority of the unresolved cases. The Polish government is thus able to emphasize that the law is nondiscriminatory, and necessary to create an environment of “legal certainty,” in which claims from the distant past can’t come back to haunt current owners.
“It’s been an issue for decades,” says Avraham Biderman, co-chair of the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO), the body responsible for restitution negotiations. “Many countries have made very substantial restitution payments — Germany at the top of the list, for understandable reasons. But the one country where the most Jews were killed has never done anything, despite the fact that Jews owned 40 percent of Warsaw before the war.”
It’s important to note, he says, that no one is talking of restitution in the tens of billions of dollars, the sums that were stolen. “We want something fair and substantial to go to the heirs.”
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