Israel (Washington Insider Magazine) – recalled its envoy to Poland after President Andrzej Duda signed a controversial bill that Tel Aviv views as an attack on Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid stated that the Polish ambassador, Marek Magierowski, should stay not return to his posting in Tel Aviv after his summer sojourn.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will recommend today that the Polish Ambassador to Israel remain on holiday in his country,” Politico reported.
The bill, which was passed through the Warsaw’s national legislature on Aug. 11, imposes a 30–year time limit on the ability to make restitution claims and ending claims that have not reached a conclusion in the past 30 years, which would effectively eliminate many ongoing cases.
Lapid responded by saying that “tonight, Poland has become an anti-democratic and illiberal country that does not honor the greatest tragedy in human history. We must never remain silent. Israel and the Jewish people will certainly not remain silent,” he said.
Poland was proportionately home to the largest population of Jews before the onset of World War II, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Approximately 11 million people died in the German-implemented genocide, the vast majority of whom were Jews but also other ethnicities.
Duda has said that the bill is not intended to target survivors of the Holocaust. “I unequivocally reject this rhetoric and say it with all my strength,” he said. “Linking this act with the Holocaust raises my firm objection,” AP News reported.
The bill was reportedly signed to limit the ability of criminal groups from falsely claiming property and representing true owners in courts. Poland has not yet passed a bill regulating restitution and claiming of stolen items. It was widely accepted across the political spectrum in the country. In the vote, 309 members of the 460-member parliament backed the bill, with two against and 120 abstaining.
The bill has resonated in the U.S. where the passing of a media bill said to target U.S.-owned TVN24 and other non-European groups from owning majority-stakes in domestic Polish media outlets has already put U.S.–Polish relations on the downswing.
In a news release on Aug. 11 after the initial passing of the restitution bill in parliament, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated that “we are deeply concerned that Poland’s parliament passed legislation today severely restricting the process for Holocaust survivors and their families, as well as other Jewish and non-Jewish property owners, to obtain restitution for property wrongfully confiscated during Poland’s communist era.”
