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| - Poland's lower house of parliament passed a law late Thursday that Israel called "immoral" as experts say it could block restitution claims, including of Jewish property lost under Nazi German occupation during World War II. The legislation could also thwart the wartime property owners and their heirs from receiving compensation if they applied more than 30 years after the end of Communism in Poland in 1989, according to experts quoted by the Gazeta Wyborcza daily. "This immoral law will seriously impact relations between our countries," the Israeli embassy in Warsaw said on Twitter. It "will in effect prevent the restitution of Jewish property or compensation requests from Holocaust survivors and their descendants as well as the Jewish community that called Poland home for centuries. It's mind-boggling," it added. The US embassy had earlier addressed a letter to the parliament speaker expressing concern over the law, which still requires a green light from the senate and the president to come into effect. The bill's authors say it is needed to bring the law into line with a 2015 Constitutional Court ruling, which found that there must be a deadline after which administrative decisions can no longer be contested. The legislation sets the cut-off date at 10 to 30 years, depending on the case. The law was passed with 309 votes in favour, zero against, and 120 abstentions. Six million Poles, half of them Jewish, were killed during Nazi Germany's 1939-45 occupation of Poland during World War II. bo-amj/mas/tgb
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