THE RESTITUTION LAWS AND POLAND’S MEMORY BATTLES

This article seeks to identify the reasons behind Poland’s decision to adopt a new law on the restitution of confiscated properties in 2021, although another law already stipulated the historical conditions for addressing the legacy of the Holocaust in 2018. The two laws were conceived on the premise that Nazi Germany bore almost exclusive responsibility for the Holocaust. The most recent law intended to regulate a segment of the valuable Warsaw real estate market which had been affected by numerous public scandals during the past two decades. Enacted on August 14, 2021, the new law blocked the former owners and their legal successors not only from recovering their former estates, but also from receiving rightful compensation. Legislators considered that the law had to conform to a 2015 ruling of the Constitutional Tribunal, which imposed limits on appeals against administrative decisions set between 10 and 30 years. Although the law concerns an administrative act, it also reflects the political disputes over the nation’s historical memory and, in particular, one of the most tragic periods in the history of Poland: 1939-1945.