This week there was a surprising consensus in Poland - usually a polarized state and learning political and value disputes.
Politicians, academics, jurists, journalists and even members of the Jewish community, supporters of the ruling party and its bitter opponents, wondered what made Israel's foreign minister roll over their country, calling it anti-Semitic and anti-democratic and causing an explosion in relations with it.
It must be assumed that legislative amendments to the Code of Administrative Procedure of Poland have never had such a resounding and explosive echo. In most publications in Israel, the amendments were presented as denying Holocaust survivors, or their heirs, the possibility of reclaiming property stolen from them by the Nazis, and this provoked waves of rage in Poland. Rage is justified, it must be said, because the reality is very far from the simplistic way of describing the legislation by Yair Lapid. And when Lapid chose to describe it as another attempt by Poland to undermine the historical truth and the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, the resentment of the Poles, including many friends of Israel, overflowed.
"Legislative amendments do not at all deal with the distinction between Jews and non-Jews, do not discriminate against anyone and do not prevent justice from being done to Holocaust victims," said Jacob Komok, State Secretary at the Polish Presidency and Director of the Office of President Andrzej Duda. International.
"Whoever distorts them and presents them in a false way is prevented from prejudice or ignorance, and in my eyes is similar to those anti-Semites who always seek the guilt of the Jews. The identification of the law with the Holocaust tragedy was born in Lapid's mind - the law does not refer to them at all."
Two dictatorial regimes confiscated property from Polish citizens, whether Polish, Jewish or other minorities, in the middle of the 20th century - the German occupation regime and the communist regime.
In terms of the extent of the confiscated property, the communist regime apparently even surpassed the Nazis, confiscating real estate from everyone (even from the few Jews who survived the Nazi inferno), without being interested in the national affiliation of the property owner.
"The presentation of things stems from a lack of knowledge."
Foreign Minister Lapid // Photo: Oren Ben Hakon,
When the Soviet camp collapsed and Poland renounced the communist grip, a process of returning the looted property to private hands began.
The previous owners or their heirs were not required to go to court.
They could present to the administrative court, equivalent to the Land Registry (Taboo) in Israel, the evidence that the Nazis or the Communists confiscated an apartment, house or land from them, and get them back.
Most of the applicants were not Jews - about 3 million Polish Jews were massacred by the Nazis and their aides, and most Jewish families were wiped off the face of the earth, leaving not a single remnant that could come and claim ownership of what was taken by the Nazis in World War II or by the regime. Polish Communist after the war.
The Mafia of Privatization
"This process of re-privatization has been accompanied by chaos and disorder that have often led to corruption," explains Komoch. Applicants who had a "friendly hand" in the administrative court, received their request; Others responded with "Go and go again." Jewish survivors and heirs in particular encountered a special difficulty: in most cases, they lived outside Poland and had to enlist the help of unreliable machinists and dubious real estate companies. These companies would buy helpless heirs the inheritance rights in pennies - sometimes 5% of the value of the property - and become the property owners in their place.
Anyone who still managed to get the restitution of the rights to the family property ran into another problem. Although the rights were registered in his name, he had no right to remove from it the tenants, who received from the communist government the possession of it and the legal right to live in it. According to Komoch, this led to the flourishing of an entire branch of crime: the same real estate companies, some Polish and some foreign, who acquired the rights from the real heirs, turned to gangs and these threatened the tenants and intimidated them in order to evict them. The phenomenon was so widespread that criminals of this type were given a special nickname - "apartment cleaners".
"It is important for me to emphasize that no one blames the Jews, God forbid, or all the returnees, most of whom were not Jews, including my family," Kumoch adds. Between two parties of rights holders. These and those were right. Whoever returned the looted property was right. "By the way, those who lived in this way in a house taken from their previous owners were Jews who survived the Holocaust."
The shortcomings of the re-privatization process have led to countless appeals against the decisions of the administrative court, and it has never been possible to know whether the decision on the restitution of the property is final, or whether it will be overturned years later. And since millions have been resettled after the war, Komoch estimates that hundreds of thousands of citizens, especially in the big cities, lived in fear and uncertainty, lest tomorrow some macher would appear with a paper declaring that the allocation of the apartment by the communist government was null and void. Naturally, this halted development and urban renewal. What entrepreneur will invest in an environment in which the state of ownership rights is uncertain and clear?
All of these problems spawned an entire public movement that demanded an end to the restitution process. "This movement had nothing to do with the conservative right-wing party in power today," notes Komoch. The 'Mafia of Re-Privatization' in Warsaw, and the first to now support President Duda's decision to sign amendments to the legislation.
"Finally, after 40,000 to 55,000 people lost their apartments (not to Jewish survivors or their heirs, but to shrewd legal companies and the Mafia), the matter was brought before the Polish Constitutional Court, and in 2015 it passed a resolution demanding that the parliament A statute of limitations for the validity of administrative decisions, and in effect limiting the time required to cancel the allocation of apartments from the communist period. What has happened now - Parliament has implemented the ruling of the Constitutional Court. "
"There is room to correct the offense of the commandment 'Thou shalt not steal'."
Rabbi Shodrich // Photo: EP,
Do not run away from responsibility
Komoch's claim is supported by the results of the vote on the law in the Polish parliament. His critics in Israel, who hang the culprit in Auntie's right-wing "Law and Justice" party and direct their attacks at her, will be surprised to find that the law was not even opposed. The opposition parties, which are always happy to accuse "Law and Justice" of deviating from the principles of democracy, did not think this time that it was justified to vote against.
"The unjustified accusation of anti-Semitism is especially painful for me as well, a grandson of a Polish man who fought against the Nazis, was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo, and also by others here," Malin Komoch said. "Lapid presents as if there are tens of thousands of families of Holocaust survivors, who have documents attesting to the stolen property and Poland tells them no, but this is a false claim. More importantly: the law does not close the door to those whose property is stolen or to their heirs, "
In the eyes of some, the role of Kumoch, who parallels the National Security Adviser in other countries, will have to listen carefully to his remarks; In the eyes of others, being a representative of the authorities may actually make him suspicious of a lack of objectivity. Therefore, opinions heard from other political camps and other sectors of Polish society have special significance, and these, contrary to expectations, often support his position.
Prof. Eva Latovska, a senior jurist affiliated with left-wing circles in Poland and who served on the Constitutional Court for nine years, completely denies the allegations against the antisemitic background behind the legislation, but is sure that a more sensitive approach could have been taken.
"The law is not directed against Jews," she clarifies, "and contrary to the propaganda now being heard, it does not harm Holocaust victims. The principle underlying the new law is correct. The abolition of old administrative decisions of the communist regime was an instrument of restitution to all previous owners. All owners, not just Jews The decision to limit the process in time to 30 years is good, but the implementation is less good, both in terms of the art of legislation and from the point of view of presenting what has been done with the committed sensitivity. For political games. "
Michael Shodrich, the Chief Rabbi of Poland, also does not see the new Polish law as an antisemitic dimension, but notes that he is aware of the negative declarative aspect of stopping the return of property to their previous owners - Poles, Jews or others: " "The importance of the word 'do not steal', and the theft of property by the Nazi occupier, and later by the communist regime, was theft, and it must be corrected."
And what about the response of the Foreign Minister of the State of Israel?
"Suppose there are two friends, and there is a dispute between them over a certain issue," the rabbi explains. "Opposes Iran and the boycott movement against the Jewish state. Is it because the two governments do not see eye to eye on the issue of restitution that it is right to burn this friendship?"
Komoch // Photo: Anatolia Agency Turkey,
Assets no, money yes
To the concern heard in Rabbi Shodrich's voice, real political echoes were added this week. A senior source in the Polish Foreign Ministry estimated that Minister Lapid is not interested in good relations with Poland and is knowingly giving them up, in order to change Benjamin Netanyahu's political legacy.
Contrary to the turmoil that characterized the reactions in the public arena, the lawyers involved in restitution refuse to be moved by the legislative amendments. The legal opinion, which was submitted to one of the Jewish organizations in Poland, went so far as to state that in practice they would not affect the plaintiffs' chances of receiving what they deserved for the stolen property. First, the wording of the amendments, without mentioning it, applies them only to the properties in Warsaw, because only there the nationalization of private properties was made in an administrative decision. Second, in September 2020 the Polish parliament banned in another law the re-privatization of properties with tenants, so the way to return the properties to all previous owners has been blocked for about a year anyway. The monetary compensation for them, however, can be demanded and received.
Prof. Latowska, who served as Poland's first Human Rights Commissioner from 1988 to 1992, believes that the overall regulation of the compensation mechanism for Holocaust survivors among Polish Jews should have been formulated long ago: "In the 1960s, under the auspices of Western governments, including the United States." b, agreed on and paid compensation to citizens of those countries in respect of property left in Poland, and the mistake of the Polish authorities was that they never proposed strategic plan of restitution. "
difficult to separate the law from the general context of the restoration of Jewish property and the attitude of Poland towards the past.
" Interestingly repair past injustices And 'transitional justice' have aroused and continue to arouse strong feelings in Poland.
The sensitivity of the issue of Holocaust victims is intensified in the face of insensitivity, resentment and anti-Semitism (the real one and the one used for propaganda purposes), to which is added the delay in dealing with the problem, which should have been addressed much earlier.
An ostrich's policy always aggravates the situation. "
To Tovska // Photo: M. Zienkiewicz,
How do you see the best solution to the problem of property restitution?
"Poland cannot and should not be held responsible for the crimes of Nazi Germany. The consequences of World War II, including the question of Jewish property, were a large part of my work as human rights commissioner. "The former assets themselves have become an illusion, and the fact that it concerns Poles and Jews equally is certainly not comforting. A partial arrangement was better - but final and absolute - and the big mistake was the unwillingness to consider how to end the matter legally."
