Poland To Partially Compensate Jews For Looted Property
(JTA) — The World Jewish Restitution Organization cautiously welcomed a Polish official’s announcement of plans to pass legislation offering partial compensation for property confiscated from private owners during communism.
Polish Deputy Justice Minister Patryk Jaki announced plans for the legislation on Wednesday, marking a break from the government’s previous reliance on individual court rulings to determine restitution rather than through legislation, as has been done in many other European countries.
“I’m ashamed that it has taken Poland until now, 28 years after the fall of communism, to prepare such a bill. This should have been taken care of a long time ago,” the PAP news agency quoted Jaki as saying during a press conference in Warsaw Wednesday.
The law that comes from the envisioned bill would allow for cash payments of up to 20 percent of the value of privately-owned properties at the time of their “nationalization.”
Restitution experts estimate that following the Holocaust, Jewish individuals and institutions in Poland lost property whose combined value exceeds the equivalent of $1 billion.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
