Israel called its ambassador to Poland for consultation after law limiting claims by Holocaust victims was enacted

The President of Poland, Andrzej Duda, this weekend promulgated the law establishing a prescription for real estate claims, a text harshly criticized by the government of Israel because it could end up affecting the families of the victims of the Holocaust.

The law limits appeals to administrative decisions taken more than 30 years ago. Duda explained in statements to the news agency Boiled that this reform aims to put “in good faith” the “insecurity” that could be created among those who have acquired potentially reprehensible goods “.

The authorities of Poland has denied any intention to affect Holocaust victims and has defended its ties to Israel, hence criticism intensified. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett pointed out that Israel cannot remain “indifferent” to a “shameful” decision.

In this direction, Bennett considers the enactment “of the greatest gravity”, to the point that “Poland has chosen to continue harming those who have lost everything”, according to his office.

This unease was reflected in the call for consultations by the Israeli ambassador in Warsaw, as announced by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yair Lapid, although the formalism comes when the new diplomatic representative had not yet arrived to visit the European country. He also invited the Polish representative in Tel Aviv to leave Israel.

“Poland has adopted, and this is not the first time, an anti-Semitic and unethical law”, expressed the head of Israeli diplomacy, in a statement in which he even described Poland as an “undemocratic” country, that “It does not honor the greatest tragedy in history.”

Israel had received in recent days the support of United States, with a statement from the State Department in which Duda was expressly invited not to take the plunge into promulgation, which comes three days after the law was last approved by the Polish Parliament.

“A comprehensive law is needed to settle claims relating to confiscated property in order to provide a certain degree of justice to the victims (…) which would benefit many Polish citizens, as well as those who were forced to leave the country. Poland during and after World War II. World war ”, he underlined in the text.

Six million Poles, half of them Jews, died in World War II in Poland. After the conflict, Communist authorities nationalized many properties that had often been left empty because their owners had died or had fled.

After the fall of communism in 1989, Poland has never adopted a comprehensive restitution law like other Central and Eastern European countries have done, leaving everyone to try their luck in court.

(With information from AFP and Europa Press)

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