Poland’s new law ‘slams the door’ on Holocaust survivors’ hopes for restitution

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Poland’s adoption Saturday of a controversial measure curtailing Holocaust-related restitution claims set off a firestorm in Israel and the wider Jewish world, sparking allegations of state-sponsored antisemitism and a rapidly escalating diplomatic crisis between Warsaw and Jerusalem.

Although the law says nothing about the Holocaust or World War II, it establishes that any administrative decision issued 30 years ago or more can no longer be challenged. This means that property owners who had their homes or a business seized in the communist era can no longer claim compensation.

Despite the uproar the new law has caused – both the U.S. and Israeli governments urged Poland not to pass the law – it is unclear just how much of a practical difference it will actually make, given the bureaucratic and legal difficulties Poland has long been accused of placing in the way of Jews seeking to recover family property stolen by the Nazis during World War II and was subsequently nationalized by the communist regime.

“The law doesn’t change anything here,” said Michael Orich, an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor from Bnei Brak who has been trying for decades to regain ownership of his parents’ Warsaw apartment.

“There was no possibility to lodge a complaint even before the law,” he said. “They didn’t allow us to lodge complaints to get property back. They want to dispossess us and never wanted to return our property to us,” he added, asserting that the new law “didn’t do anything new.”

According to the advocacy group World Jewish Restitution Organization, Poland is the only European Union member state without a restitution law, as well as the only country in the former communist bloc “that has taken no action to return private property.”

Polish President Andrzej Duda, who passed the restitution law on Saturday, provoking outrage in both Jerusalem and Washington.Valentina Petrova/AP

It is hard to measure the law’s impact because “Polish courts have made it very difficult for claimants” in terms of demands for documentation and other bureaucratic hurdles, said WJRO operations chair Gideon Taylor. And while some people have been able to succeed in recovering private property, “it’s a limited number,” he added.

“I think what the law does is slam the door – what limited door was open,” he said. “Its biggest impact was its statement that this issue is over for Poland. That’s basically what the law is trying to say: that it’s closed.”

Efforts to reclaim property are frequently complicated not only by “draconian and very often unfair legal demands,” but also because even in cases when plaintiffs win legal victories in court, local governments will sometimes block the transfer of ownership, said former Israeli Ambassador to Poland Zvi Ravner.

This is what happened to David Kotek, 62, who tried and failed to regain control of a building in Sosnowiec, southern Poland, that once belonged to his family. “Under a decision of the court, this building is the property of Moshe Kotek,” he said, referring to his father. “According to law, it’s ours. What did the Polish government do? They placed it under the control of the local authority,” which refused to allow the building to be reregistered, claiming Kotek had not made his case in time and that his ownership had officially expired.

While he was ultimately unsuccessful in his quest, Kotek said Poland’s new legislation still left him feeling devastated.

“The second the law passed, all of this stopped. It stopped everything in place,” he said.

Shoshana Greenberg, 74, said she suffered a similar experience. After years of collecting documentation, she was finally declared the heir of one of her family’s properties in 2016 – only to be told by the local land authority that she could not register it in her name.

“We received an answer that they’re refusing our request. It’s absurd that they said I’m not the owner,” she said. “There’s a law in Poland that, even if I’m the heir, I’m not the owner. There’s no sense in this. For nine years I struggled to get documentation. Poland didn’t rush to answer me or send me the papers that I demanded. It took months and years, until I compiled a file I could bring to court.”

The Noyzk synagogue and parts of the old Jewish quarter in Warsaw prior to World War II.Czarek Sokolowski / AP

While many Polish citizens were given the opportunity to reclaim old properties following Polish independence in the wake of the communist collapse in 1989, and reprivatization was an essential part of the country’s shift to free market capitalism, survivors and their children living abroad had a harder time of it, Ravner said.

The new law, which applies to all property and not just that belonging to Jews, enjoyed wide backing as there has never been widespread support for restitution, with many seeing it as a “matter of justice” to prevent Jews from returning and reclaiming homes currently inhabited by Poles.

Moreover, many in Poland argue that if they had to return the property of some 3 million Poles slaughtered by the Nazis, or even just to pay compensation, the country would be financially ruined.

“This was a very strong claim during the 1990s,” Ravner said, “when Poland came out of communism and was a very poor country. It is a far less relevant or strong claim today when Poland is a prosperous country.”

He added that “things have practically not changed much,” with the passing of the law, “but the finalization of potential claims is what has really angered everybody.”

Greenberg said that every time she is forced to think about the matter, “it takes a heavy emotional toll, it doesn’t give me peace. Even if I don’t speak about this, it’s part of me.”

She called for the international community to impose sanctions on Poland in an effort to make it revoke the law. “Maybe I can go to my father’s grave and say ‘I didn’t succeed but I tried, and it wasn’t up to me. Forgive me father,'” she said.