Israel’s Foreign Ministry summoned yesterday Polish Ambassador Marek Magierowski to express its disapproval over a law approved recently by the parliament in Warsaw for limiting restitution rights of Jewish victims of the Holocaust. A statement issued by the ministry yesterday said the director of the political department, Alon Bar, “expressed the State of Israel’s severe disappointment [at the legislation], which is expected to adversely affect, according to experts, 90% of property restitution requests from Holocaust survivors and their descendants.” In a counter demarche, the Polish Foreign Ministry invited Israel’s charge d’affaires, Tal Ben-Ari Yaalon, for a similar reprimand this afternoon.
An already existing rift between Jerusalem and Warsaw over Polish restitution widened over the past few days. On June 24, shortly after the discussion over the law in the Polish parliament, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid issued an especially harsh statement. “Poland's draft law will in effect prevent the restitution of Jewish property, or the provision of compensation, to Holocaust survivors and their heirs. It is a horrific injustice and disgrace that harms the rights of Holocaust survivors, their heirs and members of the Jewish communities that existed in Poland for hundreds of years. This is an incomprehensible action. This immoral law will seriously harm relations between the countries. We view with gravity the attempt to prevent the restitution of the property that was stolen by the Nazis [and their helpers] in European states during the Holocaust to their legal owners. No law will change history. It is a disgrace that will not erase the horrors or the memory of the Holocaust,’’ read the statement, adding that “Poland, on whose soil millions of Jews were murdered, knows what is the right thing to do.”
