By: Fern Sidman
Poland’s parliament passed a law on Wednesday that would prevent former Polish property owners, including Holocaust survivors and their descendants, from regaining property expropriated by the country’s communist regime, as was reported by the Associated Press.
The adopted amendment to Poland’s administrative law would prevent property ownership and other administrative decisions from being declared void after 30 years. It affects Jewish and non-Jewish owners who had properties seized in the communist era.
AP reported that Israel condemned the legislation, with Foreign Minister Yair Lapid saying it “damages both the memory of the Holocaust and the rights of its victims.” He added on Wednesday that “I condemn the Polish parliamentary legislation that was approved today, which harms the memory of the Holocaust and the rights of its victims.”
Meanwhile, Gideon Taylor, the chair of the World Jewish Restitution Organization, or WJRO, an advocate for property restitution, said the group was “outraged by today’s vote in the Polish lower house, which is equally unfair for both Jews and non-Jews.” The WJRO has lobbied vigorously against the law, according to a JPost report.
He added that, “If this bill is signed into law by President Andrzej Duda, the Polish government will have effectively legally foreclosed the possibility for rightful owners to secure redress for what was taken from them. Poland is, of course, not responsible for what Nazi Germany did during the Holocaust. However, more than 30 years after the fall of Communism, Poland still benefits from this wrongfully acquired property.”
Taylor called on Duda to veto the bill, and urged the Polish government to work together with WJRO to settle the issue of private property restitution.
“Property restitution is about more than money – for many Holocaust survivors and their families, a home is the last remaining physical connection to the lives they once led, to the countries where they were born, and to the towns where they grew up, before their lives were shattered,” Taylor said, according to the AP report.
“ Many Holocaust survivors and their families have been waiting for justice for too long,” he said. “We will not stop seeking justice for Holocaust survivors and others.” He added that the bill was “equally unfair to both Jews and non-Jews.”
The JPost reported that Speaker of the Knesset Mickey Levy described the law as “daylight robbery that desecrates the memory of the Holocaust,” adding “Poland’s decision to pass this immoral law harms the friendship and bilateral relations between Israel and Poland.”
As a result, he decided not to re-establish the parliamentary friendship group between the Israeli Knesset and the Polish Sejm and Senate, which regularly holds various activities to strengthen ties between the countries, was reported by the JPost.
In the case of the former Jewish owners, at stake in many cases are the homes or business of families who were wiped out in the Holocaust and whose properties were later seized by Poland’s communist-era authorities, according to the AP report.
According to statement posted on the World Jewish Restitution Organization web site, since becoming a democracy in 1989, a number of bills have been proposed in Poland to deal with the restitution of, or compensation for, private property seized by the Nazis and/or later nationalized by the Communist regime – none became law. Poland stands alone as the only major country in the former Soviet bloc, and member state of the European Union, without such a law.
Moreover, after repeated, unfulfilled commitments to pass a restitution law over the years, the Government of Poland claimed in the spring of 2012 that such a law is unnecessary. Instead, government officials assert that restitution claimants should go to the Polish court system to seek justice, despite the fact that such a complex, expensive, burdensome and time-consuming path would serve – and, for years, has served – as a de facto barrier to elderly survivors and their heirs.
About 90% of the approximately 3,300,000 Jews who lived in Poland prior to the Second World War were killed in the Holocaust. Tens of thousands of Jewish and non-Jewish rightful owners – and the heirs of rightful owners – of real property in Poland not only continue to be left without what is rightfully theirs, but also without any serious effort by the government to provide even a semblance of justice.
In 2000, the Jewish communities of Poland (represented by the Union of Religious Jewish Communities – “JRCP”), together with the WJRO, established the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage. By agreement, Poland was divided into a number of jurisdictions in which formerly Jewish-owned communal property had been confiscated. In each of the jurisdictions, the Foundation or one of nine designated Jewish communities was given the responsibility for the restitution process and Jewish heritage preservation. In the period 1997 – 2000, the JRCP and the nine Jewish communities submitted claims for the confiscated, formerly Jewish, communal property in their jurisdictions.
Over fifteen years after the claim filing deadline, a majority of claims has still not been resolved and most of the resolved claims have not led to restitution or compensation. The Foundation is responsible for approximately 3,500 claims (including 600 for cemeteries) submitted by the claims deadline, while the other Jewish communities submitted another 2,000 claims (including several hundred for cemeteries). As of December 31, 2015, of the total of 5,504 authorized claims filed by all Jewish communities, the pertinent Regulatory Commission had adjudicated (entirely or partially) only 2,645 claims. Further, of the claims that have been adjudicated (in full or in part), fewer than half were positive decisions or settled by agreement, which led to the return of the contested property or related compensation.
Once properties are returned, Polish law imposes significant burdens on the Jewish communities. A substantial portion of the Regulatory Commission’s positive decisions, resulting in the return of actual property, has consisted of cemeteries and synagogues. Generally speaking, these represent the less valuable properties claimed and are almost always in serious disrepair when transferred. Moreover, decisions involving the return of such properties have placed the recipient Jewish community in “Catch 22” dilemmas. Polish law requires a property owner – under threat of penalty – to maintain and preserve the property.
The cemeteries and synagogues restituted to the Jewish communities almost always require extensive and expensive work, because they were not maintained over the years, were permitted to deteriorate, and often were desecrated while in the possession of the government or other parties. Nonetheless, the government, after returning such dilapidated, untended properties, requires the Foundation or communities immediately to repair the property and bear the onerous costs of improvement and upkeep.
The AP reported that Poland says the new legislation is a response to fraud and irregularities that have emerged in the restitution process, leading to evictions or giving real estate to property dealers in a process called “wild re-privatization.”
Michael Bazyler, an expert in international law and restitution at Chapman University School of Law in California, argues that it is the wrong tool to fight the problem, and that cutting off claims of former owners forever amounts to “perpetuating injustice by the communists,” according to the AP report.
AP reported that the United States had been pressuring Poland in hopes of stopping the legislation.
“We are deeply concerned that Poland’s parliament passed legislation today severely restricting the process for Holocaust survivors and their families, as well as other Jewish and non-Jewish property owners, to obtain restitution for property wrongfully confiscated during Poland’s communist era,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. He urged Duda to not sign the bill into law or to refer it to Poland’s constitutional tribunal.
Duda now has 21 days to sign the legislation into law or veto it, according to the JPost report.
The new law would make it impossible for a court to invalidate a confiscation if 10 years have passed since that confiscation was carried out. In addition, the new law would make it impossible to even begin proceedings in court to reclaim property if 30 years have passed since the property was confiscated.
