WARSAW, Poland — Poland continues to grapple with one of the last unresolved legacies of the Nazi and Communist eras.

Seventy years after its occupation by Germany in World War II and 20 years since its liberation from the yoke of So­viet com­munism, Poland has yet to pass res­titution legislation to compensate Poles for lost private property.

By all accounts, Jews, who comprised about 10 per cent of Poland’s pre-war population, account for almost 20 per­ cent of the claimants.

Under a 1997 agreement, Poland has begun to return communal property. But according to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which has discussed the issue with Po­lish representatives, Poland is the only major country in the former Soviet bloc not to have settled this thorny problem.

Last year, the then-prime minister of Poland, Jaroslaw Kazczynski, and Po­land’s ambassador to Israel, Agnieszka Magdziak-Miszewska, both promised   that the government would work to adopt a law to redress the issue.

Yet to this day, Poland has not lived up to its promise.

According to Stanislaw Krajewski, a member of the Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland, and a foun­der of the Polish-Israeli Friendship Society, there have been 10 attempts to resolve the issue since Poland’s peaceful passage to democracy in 1989.

Eight years ago, the then-president of Poland, Aleksander Kwasniewski, ve­toed such a bill, saying it violated the constitution and would be too cost­ly to bear. In 2006, the Polish government submitted draft legislation proposing compensation for confiscated private property. But the bill was limited in scope, not including properties in War­saw, the capital, and offering only 20 cents per dollar.

“It’s a massive problem because millions of people are involved,” said Krajewski, a Warsaw University philosophy professor. “It would be a huge financial burden on Poland.”

By one estimate, Jewish property claims run the gamut from $30 to $40 billion (US), this at a time when Poland is struggling with a deepening recession that is expected to grow still worse in 2010.

The issue is exacerbated by two fac­tors. Nearly half of Warsaw’s infrastruc­ture was destroyed during the war and replaced by new buildings, and some of the areas populated by Jews before 1939 lie outside Poland’s present border.

In a recent interview in Warsaw, the chief rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, an advocate of Po­lish-Jewish reconciliation, said that Poland’s failure to expedite the problem is a “major moral stain” on its soul.

Last year, in a piece in a Polish daily newspaper, the president of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald Lauder, wrote,  “To deny the return of stolen property or adequate compensation violates basic democratic principles. Such a denial to a Holocaust victim is a double humiliation. People who barely survived the war and later learned that everything they own­ed had been seized by others, including the Polish state, cannot be expected to wait any longer.”

In a position paper, the World Jewish Restitution Organization said, “Assets taken over or expropriated must be given back, otherwise the wrong committed is not redressed. The international community demands it. Morality requires it.” It added, “Poland should attempt to have all private properties confiscated from 1939 to the end of the Communist regime restituted to their former owners or their heirs, even if many such properties are currently possessed by third parties.”

Last week, the new executive vice-president of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, Greg­ory Schneider, said that it will continue to work with the World Jewish Res­titution Organization in Poland.

“It is a matter of basic justice that stolen property be returned,” he said. “We are not seeking a designated amount. Rather, we seek justice.”

Zvi Rav-Ner, Israel’s ambassador to Poland, told The CJN that Israel has raised the issue.

“We are asking them to find a solution. It’s a difficult, painful, complicated issue. We just hope they find a solution. Within 15 to 20 years, there won’t be [Holocaust] survivors left to benefit from a restitution law.”

Konstany Gebert – a Polish-Jewish journalist and director of the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture, an American-based organization that funds Jewish projects in Poland – warn­ed that Poland will face an ava­lanche of lawsuits should action not be taken.

“Poland could be sued to the hea­vens,” he said.

Three years ago, the New York Legal Assistance Group, a non-profit organization that provides free civil legal ser­vices to Holocaust survivors, threatened to file a claim against Poland in the European Court of Human Rights.

The claim would have been on behalf of French survivor Henryk Pikielny, who challenged Poland’s refusal to give back his father’s factory in Lodz.

Last year, Baroness Deech, a former British Broadcasting Corporation governor, hired lawyers in an attempt to force Poland to compensate her for properties that belonged to her maternal grandmother, who was murdered in a Ger­­man concentration camp.

Polish officials realize that the issue is eroding Poland’s image abroad.

“I wish it could have been settled already,” said Ewa Junczyk-Ziomecka, secretary of state for community relations and social affairs in the chancellery of the president and Poland’s soon to be consul general in New York City.

“Now there’s a financial crisis,” she added. “But finally it has to be  done, as soon as possible. We don’t need this. It makes both sides nervous. Our relations [with the Diaspora] could be hurt. I’m very worried about it. But I can’t ima­gine that the government will pass restitution legislation in this economic crisis. I ask the Jewish community to be pa­tient.”

Maciej Kozlowski, Poland’s former ambassador to Israel and currently its ambassador at large for Jewish relations, urged Jews to understand his country’s difficulties.

Due to border changes since 1945, a  number of properties claimed by Jews are now in Ukraine, Belarus and Ger­many, he explained in an interview. “To write a law that excludes such property would be very difficult.”

In any event, he noted, Poland is in no position to pay full value for lost pro­p­erties.

Kozlowski, whose family estate near Krakow was confiscated by the Communist regime, expressed pessimism that Jewish claimants can ever be satisfied. “If we give them 20 per cent of the value of a property, we’ll be asked for 50 per ­cent. It’s a legal nightmare,”

He has no idea when Poland will finally come clean. “No one knows when a law will be passed. It’s a very complicated issue.”