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Poland's President Andrzej Duda signed the law on Saturday
Photo: DAMIAN BURZYKOWSKI / imago images / newspix
In the dispute over the controversial Polish restitution law, the government in Warsaw has ordered its ambassador back to Israel.
The foreign ministry announced on Monday that the ambassador would remain in Poland “until further notice”.
The move came two days after the Israeli government, in turn, ordered its diplomatic chargé d'affaires in Poland back and described Polish law as "immoral and anti-Semitic."
Poland's President Andrzej Duda signed the controversial law on the return of property confiscated after World War II on Saturday.
The law retroactively enacts a 30-year limitation period for return and compensation claims and thus excludes the claims of many descendants of Holocaust victims.
The Polish Foreign Ministry described the recall of the Israeli chargé d'affaires on Monday as "unjustified" and the criticism of the Israeli government of the law as "unacceptable".
The ministry went on to say that the "permanent extent of diplomatic representation in Israel" will be decided "in the coming days."
In the interim, "another employee" will head the work of the embassy in Tel Aviv, a deputy for the ambassador will not be sent.
Six million Poles were murdered during World War II, half of them Jews.
After the war, the communist authorities in Poland nationalized a large part of vacant houses and properties whose owners had been murdered by the National Socialists or fled from Europe.
Poland speaks of legal security in the real estate market
The text of the law affects Jewish and non-Jewish dispossessed alike.
Critics complain, however, that Jews are disproportionately affected in practice because many of them did not have the opportunity to assert their claims immediately after the war.
The government in Warsaw argues that the law creates legal certainty in the real estate market.
It also prevents fraud.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki ruled out demands for a comprehensive compensation law, as exist in other Central and Eastern European countries, on the grounds that Poland would “not pay for the German crimes” in World War II.
nek / AFP