Israel and Poland had finally settled their differences over the Senate approval of a controversial bill making it illegal to accuse the Polish nation or state of complicity in the Nazi Holocaust.
However, a new diplomatic dispute has emerged, threatening ties.
Poland’s lower house of parliament on Thursday passed a draft bill that would make it harder for survivors of the Holocaust to recover property seized by the Nazis on Polish soil.
The draft law, which still needs approval by the parliament’s upper house (Senate), introduced a statute of limitations on claims for the restitution of property taken from Jews during World War II by the Nazis and then confiscated by the Communist regime that took power after the war.
It drew a furious response from Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, who labelled it a “disgrace.”
“No law will change history,” stressed Lapid on Thursday, adding that “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 immoral law will have a serious impact on bilateral ties,” Lapid added.
President Reuven Rivlin wrote a letter earlier this week to Polish President Andrzej Duda to object the legislation.
If ratified, the law would “very much obscure our joint efforts in bolstering bilateral relations and in securing the partnership between our nations,” Rivlin reportedly wrote.
The bill would implement a 2015 Constitutional Tribunal ruling, which set a 30-year statute of limitation on challenges to administrative decisions issued by various offices in gross violation of the law.
They are intended to end fraud and irregularities in property restitution in Warsaw, Krakow and other cities and locations.
Earlier on Friday, a Polish foreign ministry senior official accused Lapid of a “profound lack of knowledge” after he criticized the bill.
Lapid’s statement “must be unequivocally denounced,” he stressed. “It features ill-will and – most of all – profound lack of knowledge.”
“Those comments are indicative of ignorance of the facts and the Polish law,” the ministry said in a statement. “Poland is by no means responsible for the Holocaust, an atrocity committed by the German occupant also on Polish citizens of Jewish origin.”
