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WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland’s parliament passed a law on Wednesday that would prevent former Polish property owners, including Holocaust survivors and their heirs, from regaining property expropriated by the country’s communist regime.
Israel condemned the legislation, with Foreign Minister Yair Lapid saying it “damages both the memory of the Holocaust and the rights of its victims.”
The adopted amendment 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.
In the case of the former Jewish owners, they were often 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.
Poland says it is a response to settle properties in limbo for decades. Some have been the target of fraud and irregularities that have emerged in the restitution process, leading to evictions or giving real estate to property dealers.
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.
The issue is one of several points of friction that have arisen or gotten worse between Washington and Warsaw since the Biden administration has been in office. Others points include differences over the Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream 2 pipeline and a proposed restrictive media law that also passed on Wednesday.
In the U.S., State Department spokesman Ned Price said Wednesday before the bill passed: “We’re concerned by any steps that would impede the ability of Holocaust survivors and their families as well as other Jewish and non-Jewish property owners to obtain restitution or compensation for property wrongfully confiscated during Poland’s communist era.”
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Ilan Ben Zion in Israel and AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed.
The Associated Press