Poland parliament passes law to curb WWII property claims

Poland's parliament has passed a law that would prevent former Polish property owners, including Holocaust survivors and their descendants, from regaining property expropriated by the country's communist regime.

Israel condemned the legislation on Wednesday, with Foreign Minister Yair Lapid saying it "damages both 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," and and called the bill "equally unfair for both Jews and non-Jews."

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.

When communism fell in 1989, it opened up the possibility for former owners to try to regain lost properties. Some cases have made their way through the courts, but Poland has never passed a comprehensive law that would regulate restituting or compensating seized properties.

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-privatisation."

Israeli-Polish parliamentary friendship suspended 

In Israel, Speaker of the Knesset Mickey Levy decided not to re-establish the Israeli-Polish parliamentary friendship group.

"The anti-restitution law restricting property claims by victims of the Holocaust is a daylight robbery that desecrates the memory of the Holocaust," he said. 

"Poland’s decision to pass this immoral law harms the friendship and bilateral relations between Israel and Poland."

The United States had been pressuring Poland in hopes of stopping the legislation.