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Honorable speaker of the Senate,

Honorable members of the Senate,

Szanowni Państwo,

I would first like to thank the speaker of the Senate for inviting me to participate in this public hearing, so that we are able to share with you our deep and serious concerns regarding the changes to the administrative act proposed by the Sejm. 

I stand here today on behalf of Israel, the nation state of the Jewish people. Our country has arisen from the ashes of the Holocaust. I stand here for the survivors and thanks to the survivors, as a granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, as a descendant of a Polish Jew who was murdered in the Holocaust. 

They were, and some of them still are, this country’s citizens. Poland was their home. This is where they flourished for centuries, the largest Jewish community in the world. They lost everything during the Holocaust, and so the issue of their property is an issue of dignity, of justice and of memory.

We are here to give a voice to Holocaust survivors and their descendants, whose property was first seized by the Nazis, and later nationalized by the Communists. These survivors have the right, historically, morally and legally, to present their claims and to receive the compensation they deserve for their property. After all their suffering, it is the very least they are owed. 

We share a moral obligation to respect the rights of Holocaust survivors, former citizens of Poland, current citizens of Israel. It is our duty. Each and every one of us.

We understand Poland wants to strengthen proprietary certainty for its current citizens but denying the previous owners their rights, cannot be the way. This legislation, in its current form, will severely hurt the rights of former and current Polish citizens whose property was seized during WW2 and under the Soviet occupation. 

This legislation deals with thousands, if not tens-of-thousands of administrative decisions, taken during soviet times by the communist regime, in violation of the law, in order to nationalize private property. 

For many years, after the fall of communism, it was the administrative legal system that enabled former owners to exercise their rights and reclaim their property.

This administrative code stood as a lighthouse, shining light on the rights of Poles who were wronged by the Communist regime, to reclaim what was theirs. It wasn’t just about Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivors, that upon coming back to their hometowns, discovered their houses were taken and new families lived there, nor about the Polish Jews who were forced out of Poland after the events of March 1968; the administrative act enabled all, regardless of ethnicity and religion, to pursue their rights in court, in the hope of achieving justice.

The changes introduced into the legislation allow for legal indemnity with regards to all properties nationalized by communists. This will block past property owners, who were unable, until now, for different reasons, to pursue their cases, from doing so. This will force them to pay once more for others’ wrongdoing.

Thousands of former property owners, who are still in the process in the administrative court, or still gather the needed documents and proofs, will be unable to pursue justice.

I would like to stress again some points to the honorable members of committees: 

First, this is a very serious violation of the individual rights of various Polish plaintiffs; this is not just a problem of Jews.

Second, there is a need to balance the various rights. 

I would like to bring to your attention the complexity of the decision, and the concern that legitimizing the acts of nationalization will irreversibly harm the rights of those who will be unjustly punished for this change in policy. 

The decision to enforce these changes immediately, and to apply them also to ongoing cases, favors the rights of one group over the other, and should be reconsidered.

In our opinion, it would do great justice if the said legislation results in a balance between the various interests at stake. It would be an injustice if the property rights of Polish citizens were harmed in an unbalanced manner.

There must be a just solution. A solution that takes into account history, takes into account values, takes into account morality. Listen to the voices from the Jewish world, listen to the voices from the Jewish State. Listen to the pain this legislation is causing. Listen to the voices of the survivors who are you telling you to stop this legislation and reconsider. It isn't too late.