Polish Anti-defamation Law

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Tuesday 5th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

Politicians nowadays are often accused of being bland, anonymous, anodyne figures. It is on an occasion such as this that we realise that we have here, in our Parliament, people with a unique range of references, sources, backgrounds and histories. I deeply respect the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) and his background, his family connection and his blood tie. However, the speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) was quite simply one of the most impressive that I have heard in Westminster Hall. He spoke from the heart; he spoke with absolute passion and with truth; and no one who heard him could be unmoved by his comments. Regrettably, having said that, I have to come to a conclusion that is completely opposite to the one that he has reached.

The Act submitted to the Sejm on 26 January 2018 was not intended, nor can it be seen, as an act of anti-Semitism. It is an Act specifically to address a concern that is viscerally agonising for the Polish people—the constant repetition of that inaccurate, brutal, cruel phrase “Polish death camps” or “Polish extermination camps”. That was the reason for the legislation. The fact that it has been referred to the constitutional committee suggests to me that it might have been, in certain circumstances, appropriate for us to have delayed this debate.

Having listened to my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West, however, I entirely understand why he felt it necessary to bring this matter to the House even while that process is in play. I also have no doubt that I speak for every person inside and outside this Chamber in expressing our deepest sympathy to him for the foul, vile, scatological filth that he has suffered. Sadly, it is not unique, but there certainly seems to be a particular strand and trend, which is deeply regrettable. I would not say that this is indicative of attitudes in Poland. Of course there are Polish anti-Semites—no one could pretend otherwise—but to say that these comments are somehow reflective of all Poles, and that this issue is about the Polish League Against Defamation or various other groups, is to give them more strength and power than they actually deserve.

This process was not sought by the Polish Government or the Sejm. It was a reaction to a circumstance that seemed to be gathering in pressure and strength. Many are concerned, as my hon. Friend implied, that this legitimises and opens the door to anti-Semitism. In Poland, however, exactly the opposite applied. It was felt that the constant reference to Polish death camps opened the door to something even worse—revisionism, an attack on Polish history and an assault on the contributions that the Poles made.

Let us never forget that there was no Polish Pétain or Quisling. If we want to see the Poles in the second world war, we need to look to General Bór-Komorowski, the people who fought with the Warsaw rising and the people in the Government in exile who introduced the death penalty for confiscating, stealing or abusing Jewish people or their property. There was no anti-Semitism in the structural sense. Of course there were, inevitably, such individuals. I have them in my constituency, Mr Gapes, and I am sure you have them in yours.

The Polish Government introduced this legislation as a response to a gathering storm throughout the world. I am disappointed that the reaction of the current Israeli Government has been unusual in its strength. The Israeli ambassador to Poland, Anna Azari, was involved right from the beginning in these discussions with the Government in Poland, the Sejm and the committee that structured and drafted this.

Article 55a, paragraph 3 was specifically introduced into the legislation to avoid any accusation that this legislation would close down debate, because there were some people who felt that this legislation, unamended, would not allow scientific analysis. It is said that only the future is certain; the past is always changing. Well, we are not afraid of the past. This amendment was brought in specifically to exclude not just scientific and academic research, but artistic research, to avoid any accusation that this matter was being closed down. We have to respect and understand that.

The hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham mentioned the discussions that took place between the two Prime Ministers, Mateusz Morawiecki and Benjamin Netanyahu. I think that is a positive sign. We see too much, in this place and on this planet, of people striking postures, beating their chest and issuing absurd Twitter comments in the middle of the night. I mention no names and I point no fingers—even if it was with a very little hand. There are those people, however, who think that we need to discuss and debate these issues. The two Prime Ministers are the appropriate people.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

The hon. Gentleman is, as usual, making an eloquent speech. At all these award ceremonies where Poles are recognised for helping Jews—certainly at the one I attended—the Polish Prime Minister, Mr Morawiecki, is present, as is the head of the Law and Justice party, Prezes Kaczyński. They want to send a strong message about the strength of feeling among the Polish state about reconciliation and harmony between Poles and Jews.

[Stephen Pound]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who speaks with authority on these matters. He and I have stood together at the Katyn memorial. We have spoken at many of these occasions. We have been at RAF Northolt on the day on which, every year, we recognise the heroic contribution of the 303 Squadron—the most successful fighter squadron in the Royal Air Force—when the bonds between our two countries were forged in blood. He knows, as I know, the depth of the contribution that the Polish people have made. I am not Polish. I do not have a drop of Polish blood. I lack that honour. When I hear this expression about Polish death camps, however, I feel for Poland and I weep for the Polish people.

Look at what is happening nowadays in Warszawa and Kraków. There is a holocaust memorial museum and the complete rebuilding of the ghetto, where there are Jewish restaurants and a whole Jewish quarter. In fact, they do not use the word ghetto any more, which is probably just as well. South of Kraków, at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the air falls still. In the forest there is no birdsong. Something so terrible happened there that the weight of history still presses down on those people who approach it. Something has sucked the energy out of the air. Visitors pass beneath that awful sign, which the hon. Gentleman referred to.

I hope that no one in the world thinks for a second that this was anything other than the planned, industrial and mechanised extermination of a people by the Nazis—not by the Poles. There may have been some Ukrainians who worked in the death camps. We know that. The legislation that went through in January specifically refers to the Ukrainian actions in this particular area. That is not to imply, however, even for a passing second, that the Polish people were complicit in, supportive of, involved in or responsible for that appalling crime—that spreading stain of agony that still disfigures our history, and that marks and shapes our future as it so brutalised our past.

[Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)]

I accept some of what my hon. Friend is saying. Does he agree that, while it is certainly untrue that the Nazi extermination camps were in any way Polish death camps, there are still graphic examples of Polish complicity in the atrocities that took place against Jewish people in Poland at that time?

[Stephen Pound]

I acknowledge the expertise of my hon. Friend, but I would need to see the evidence for what she says. I would also need to understand and be educated as to the realities of life under occupation—the second occupation, because Poland was occupied twice—and what it must have been like in those days. I am not aware of Polish complicity in Auschwitz-Birkenau, but I will not say that I know everything about the subject and I am more than happy to speak to my colleague. I do know for certain that to try to tar the whole of the Polish nation with the brush of anti-Semitism on the basis of a few lunatics, a few foul anti-Semites and some obscene Twitter users is unfair, wrong, painful and hurtful to the Polish people.

The hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham referred to Polish heroism. We do not have enough time—there would not be enough time in Parliament—to list all the Polish heroes: Poniatowski, Dąbrowski, Kościuszko, Piłsudski and on and on. We know about Polish courage. I would like to bring the Chamber to a place that you know, Mr Gapes, as does the hon. Gentleman: the village of Cassino, south of Rome, which was occupied for the whole of the second world war up until 1944 by German Panzer battalions and airborne troops. It was finally captured by the Poles. There, in the shadow of the monastery of Monte Cassino, which has been referred to, there is a Polish cemetery.

All the allies, including those from Ireland, Australia, South Africa and so many other countries who fought there—even a Maori regiment from New Zealand—have their cemetery. There is something exceptional and special about the Polish cemetery. I am referring not to the grave of General Anders at the front, but to the grave markers. There are three types of grave markers in the Polish cemetery of Monte Cassino. There is the Suppedaneum cross, which is the sign of the Serbian or Russian Orthodox Church. There is the ordinary cross, which we Roman Catholics simply see as the cross. The third grave marker is the star of David. A section of the Polish war memorial—the Polish cemetery—at Monte Cassino is proudly and unashamedly dedicated to the Jewish soldiers who fought with General Anders, who fought from the camps in Siberia, who walked across Iran, who fought in El Alamein, in Libya and in the invasion of Sicily and who fought their way up the spine of Italy. Although those Jewish soldiers were cruelly betrayed by the allies—forgive me for saying so—after their huge contribution, and there was not to be a free Poland in 1945, the army recognised, cherished and valued the contribution of the Jewish soldiers who fought with them.

Would those Jewish soldiers have fought with an anti-Semitic army? Would they have fought with General Anders if they had felt that there was a strand of anti-Semitism running through the army? Sometimes silent witness is more powerful than the vocal and the verbal. To see those stars of David in the Polish cemetery tells me that Poland protected, defended and respected its Jewish population, and it will continue to do so.

This legislation is a reaction to misinformation. It does not in any way open a door to anti-Semitism. I profoundly hope that the constitutional tribunal will clarify the situation. Whatever happens, every one of us is better informed and possibly emotionally stirred by the extraordinary, unique and priceless contribution of my good friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

We can learn a lot from cemeteries. When I visited eastern Poland with a Jewish family to look at their historical roots there, we visited the Jewish cemetery. It was not in a particularly good state—I do not think anybody had visited it for many decades—but what struck me was how big it was, because the village had been largely Jewish.

I had research done into that family’s history, and I got photographs that showed the village. They raise the question about what happened to the properties. Three million Poles were murdered, which means 3 million properties disappeared, plus the communal buildings such as the synagogues. What happened to them? We can learn a lot from looking at cemeteries about what happened and who did or did not do what at any time.

There are plenty of people living in that village, but none of them are Jewish. That is not a surprise. There were 3 million Jewish Poles; there are now under 1,000. It is a thriving rural village, like many others in Poland, with a Jewish graveyard. People live in the same village, on the same streets, sometimes in the same properties, and certainly on the same land.

History can be interpreted in different ways. Let us be quite clear: this law has not come from nowhere, so those who have been protesting about it, such as Netanyahu, should have opened their mouths when the first such law was brought in by Hungary in 2010. That law criminalised the wrong interpretation of history and came with a three-year maximum prison sentence.

As Hungary attempted to legally define its history in 2010, Lithuania did too. Its law was more generous, with only two years’ imprisonment, but at the same time, Lithuania attempted to arrest two women over the age of 90: Fania Brantsovsky and Rachel Margolis. Most people, including me, would describe them as war heroes. They fought with the resistance in the Lithuanian forest. They undoubtedly killed people, but they were fighting alongside the Soviets, who came in and eventually liberated that country as part of the war effort. In 2010, Lithuania attempted to arrest those two war heroes for being war criminals. They were fighting for the resistance—it is unambiguous; there is no argument about what happened—but they went from war heroes to war criminals, and Lithuania attempted to jail them.

In 2014, Latvia brought in a law that came with five years in prison. In different ways, Ukraine and Estonia brought in criminal laws in advance of Poland, so this legislation has not come from nowhere. In Austria, there are people who attempt to describe Mauthausen as a Polish camp. Actually, I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound): it is very rare to hear the Nazi death camps in Poland described as Polish, just like it is very rare to hear death camps elsewhere described as anything other than death camps by their names, but it happens and it has happened for a period of time. Why were those camps there? They were where the Jewish population was.

There were differences in Ukraine. Ukrainians took the jobs and murdered the people. That did not happen in Poland. They did not recruit Poles to do that. They did in Lithuania. They did not bother with the camps. The Lithuanians took Jewish people out into the forest and shot them to save time and money. They did not need the Germans to do it. But who were the Nazis in all that? Who were the Nazis in Lithuania? Who were the nationalists? Who was on the side of Lithuania?

Starting with a conference in Hungary in 2008, with the European Parliament as a conduit, a group of politicians has co-ordinated and drawn together other nationalist politicians, including from Poland, to rewrite history. That is what has been going on. The example of Lithuania, and the rest of the Baltic states, is the simplest one, and in essence it says, “We weren’t fighting for anyone, other than fighting the Communists. There was a double genocide”—that term was created at the 2008 conference. “The Nazis and the communists are equally bad. The communists controlled our country and did many evil things under Stalin and beyond.” That is true; that is factually the case.

I was the first person to leave Poland with a Solidarność badge in 1980—that is a different story, which I will leave for now—so I am very aware of what the Soviets and the communists did in eastern Europe, but the problem is putting together those two genocides and describing them as if they were equal and comparable. There is an academic in Latvia who has taken it further and brought in blood libel as well. The logic goes, “My grandfather did nothing wrong, because my grandfather was a patriot. He was not supporting the Nazis. He was fighting the communists. By the way, who speaks Russian? The communists. Who speaks Russian in our country? The Jews speak Russian. Rachel Margolis speaks Russian.”

Therefore, it is possible to distort history so quickly and so easily—rewrite your own history and the history for every country, including our country and our role, as the country that failed to take in Jewish migrants in the ’30s and, indeed, after the war, in the ’40s. This country turned them away. We can all rewrite our history, sanitise our role in things and glorify what we were good at—the little bits. “Oh, we had the Kindertransport here. Weren’t we brilliant?” We let a few Jews slip in. What about the rest?

Well, that is what is going on in Poland—an attempt to rewrite history—and we should not accept that. Yes, it is true that the Poles did not run those camps—that is a fact—unlike in some neighbouring countries; but we can also look at the language. I keep reading and hearing about the 3 million Jews in Poland—the 3 million Poles; the 3 million of our citizens who were Jewish, who were murdered and lost everything. It is not a surprise that there is not much of an eyewitness record there compared with anywhere else, because few survived. It is harder for the dead to be eyewitnesses.

I will end on this. When I look at what is going on now, I take the Albert Camus view of the world—to see the world through the eye of football. In Poland at the moment, if someone goes to see a football match in Łódź—once a massive Jewish community; now no Jews live in Łódź—what is the insult used in the Łódź derby? “Jew”. From one Łódź team to the other Łódź team, for both sets of fans their term of insult is “Jew”. And what happens in Kraków when Cracovia play Wisła? Do the tourists there go on the nice, sanitised route to Auschwitz-Birkenau? My advice to anyone going there is to go on the suburban route. If they do, I will tell them what they will see on every station: Wisła Kraków graffiti saying “Jews Out”.

[Stephen Pound]

Albert Camus was obviously a great goalkeeper, and I understand my hon. Friend’s analogy. However, I am sure that he has seen Spurs play at home as many times as I have, so he will know the insult that is used against Tottenham Hotspur players. Does he agree that that sort of language—that sort of foul anti-Semitism—should be a matter for criminal law and prosecution? It should not be perceived as indicative of a nation or even a group of football supporters.

[John Mann]

Of course it should be a matter for criminal law—it is in many countries—but my point is not that Poland is any worse than any other country, but that anti-Semitism remains and this law plays to that sentiment. That is the danger of the law.

I will end with a recent quotation from a radio reporter in Poland, Marcin Wolski of TVP2. What did he describe? He said, “Let’s rename the death camps. They’re not ‘Polish death camps’, they’re ‘Jewish death camps’.” He said that on Polish radio recently—because the Sonderkommando ran the death camps, we should therefore rename them “Jewish death camps”. Bring in this kind of law and that kind of racism and anti-Semitism is unleashed. But this is not something that started in Poland; it started elsewhere in eastern Europe. People have been too silent about it—about trying to use the law to rewrite history. The law is not the way to rewrite history.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Ellman]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s concern and that of others about a description of Nazi extermination camps as “Polish death camps”—an erroneous description—but the answer to that is not to try to shut down discussion about the holocaust and its depravities.

The relationship between Jewish Poles and the wider Polish community is indeed very complex. At Yad Vashem, which I visited in Jerusalem only last week, 6,700 Polish people are recognised as righteous among the nations. They were Polish non-Jews who supported Jews in those terrible times, on many occasions risking their own lives. They are rightly recognised and honoured there.

However, there is also a lot more in that complex history to be recognised—for example, the massacre at Jedwabne in 1941, when all but six of the town’s Jewish inhabitants were set upon by their non-Jewish neighbours and burnt alive in a barn. That was truly horrendous, and it was not an isolated occurrence. Before the Nazi extermination began, the Jewish communities in Poland were very strong. They were majorities in significant areas of Poland, yet today there is hardly a Jew left. I have heard first-hand testimony from a relation of mine, who has now passed away but who was born and brought up in Kraków, about the shock and horror at their non-Jewish neighbours, who they had regarded as friends, turning against them in those terrible times. So the relationship is complex and the full history needs to be known.

It should be a matter of great concern that Yad Vashem itself, the Holocaust Educational Trust and some Polish historians have registered great concern about the potential impact of this legislation shutting down debate and research about what happened in Poland during the holocaust.

[Stephen Pound]

I bow to my hon. Friend’s experience and the depth of her knowledge of this issue. However, I have already made the point, as I believe the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) has, that paragraph 3 of article 55a of the new law specifically and explicitly allows discussion of this matter within all scientific papers, artistic papers and academic papers. That measure was specifically and explicitly placed there to avoid any remote possibility that there would be an accusation that anyone was seeking to shut down debate. It is there in black and white.

[Mrs Ellman]

I have listened to my hon. Friend’s comments with interest, but what he says is not borne out in what is happening. Indeed, since the legislation was introduced, the Polish Education Minister has denied the massacre of Jedwabne, and there have been efforts to strip the Polish-American historian, Jan Tomasz Gross, of his order of merit and even to prosecute him for his comments about Polish involvement in the persecution of Jews in Poland.

The situation is very troubling. I am pleased that discussions about what happens now are taking place within Poland, and outside, and I hope that common sense and justice prevail and that the legislation is either withdrawn or severely amended, so that there can be no shutting down of legitimate discussion about the horrors of the holocaust. The people of Poland deserve no less.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Grant]

I am grateful for that intervention. Clearly, I cannot speak with the hon. Gentleman’s authority about the detailed history of Poland, but I certainly look at it from a common-sense point of view. Surely the Jewish population in Poland was so big because Jews were comfortable there and felt that they would be treated better than in many other countries in Europe.

I find offensive any suggestion that the Polish Government, either directly or indirectly, collaborated with the Nazis, and I well understand why the people of Poland today find such suggestions greatly offensive. However, I am not convinced that criminalising the actions of a newspaper or a television programme is the right way to deal with that offence. That is where the nub lies. I think we must accept that Polish citizens will have collaborated in crimes against humanity—a tiny minority of the Polish population—as, if the full facts were known, there would no doubt have been Scots who collaborated, just as there were Scots who risked their lives to help. People of all nationalities committed acts of great courage, and people of all nationalities will have collaborated in acts of great evil. If we lose sight of that, we do a disservice to all those who risked and lost their lives.

[Stephen Pound]

I apologise for interrupting the hon. Gentleman’s flow. Holocaust denial is a crime in many parts of the world. Does he suggest that we should repeal all legislation on holocaust denial?

[Peter Grant]

Absolutely not. I was coming on to that. One of the first steps towards being prepared to allow a repeat of the holocaust is to deny that it ever happened. We also must be careful about denying that it could have happened in other places. I take issue with the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham on one point. He repeatedly referred to the crimes and actions of Germany. It is a fact that Nazism was born and developed in Germany, but the holocaust was not a battle of nationalities; it was about an ideology of sheer evil that was able to spread across Europe so quickly because it had its proponents in many more countries than we might like to think. It was certainly born and brought up in Germany, but it could have been a child of almost any nation in Europe and, it must be said, it could have happened in the United Kingdom. There were periods in the United Kingdom’s past when anti-Semitism had become so virulent that it would have been possible, if the right group of people had got together, for Nazism or something very like it to take hold. When I talk about the dangers of holocaust denial, I am talking not simply about the denial of a clear historical fact but about the denial of a clear acceptance that it could have happened in other places as well. That is why it can happen again—it has already happened again on a smaller scale—and it will continue to happen if we are not prepared to speak out and act against it.

I am aware of the time pressure and I want to leave time for the winding up. The hon. Member for Leeds North West also deserves a bit of time. I get the point that academics cannot be prosecuted but, as has been pointed out, a law of this nature not only opens a door to legal action in the courts but can sometimes be seen to legitimise actions that no one would want to see legitimised. I do not see where the line could be drawn between an academic publishing something in a journal and a newspaper reporting on that publication. At what point would the law come into play?

However difficult some parts of any nation’s history might be, we must be prepared to face up to the bad parts as well as the good. I have to accept that Glasgow—the city close to which I grew up and which I consider almost a second home—was built on the slave trade. I am not proud of that. I am proud of Glasgow, but I cannot be proud of the part that the city, and Scotland, played in the slave trade. I cannot be proud that the great ancient university town of St Andrews has monuments built into the pavements to show where devout Scottish Christians burned other devout Scottish Christians to death because they were the wrong kind of devout Christian for the time. Those things are parts of our history that we have to face up to, and the more we are willing to face up to the evils that have been done in all our countries and communities, the more we can hopefully ensure that they become much less likely to be repeated.

I have spoken before about Fife’s enormous debt of gratitude to our Polish community. Scotland and the United Kingdom owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the people of Poland not only for what they did during the war, but for what they have done since. We owe Poland an enormous debt of remorse for what we did to them after the war, when we handed Poland over to Stalin, and we should never forget that either.

There is a serious issue that has to be addressed. I simply do not think it is right to clamp down on one of the most precious freedoms we have—the freedom of the press to report things as they see them, and sometimes the freedom of the press to print things that we find offensive. That freedom needs to be protected. It can never be correct or acceptable to accuse Poland of collaboration with the holocaust, but I do not think the law as it is currently framed in Poland or in other European countries is the correct way to go about it. I hope that the Polish Government can be persuaded that there are other ways to prevent their new good name from being besmirched. At the end of the day, if idiots accuse someone of ridiculous things that did not happen, that someone should ignore the idiots and listen to the vast majority.

[Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure as always to serve under your stewardship, Mr Gapes, particularly given your great knowledge of foreign affairs and your former chairmanship of the Foreign Affairs Committee. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) for securing this debate, which has been an emotional and personal one. I think he wanted to have it elsewhere, but because he was not able to do that, he brought it here. He secured the debate because of his personal history and his family’s history. It has particularly focused on the law that has been introduced. That is a serious issue, and we have to think about how it will proceed. A number of Members have raised different views of the law.

In April 2016, the Polish Government approved a new Bill allowing for terms of up to three years’ imprisonment for anyone using phrases such as “Polish death camps” when referring to Auschwitz and other camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during world war two. That in itself is correct. Those were Nazi war camps. They were extermination camps. They were the most hideous form of genocide in the second world war. It is right to condemn that and it is not right to implicate Poland in that—that point I understand. The law goes further, however, and allows the state to give people a three-year sentence for talking about Polish camps and debating Poland’s role. That is the sticking point. How will that law be interpreted and used by different people to stifle debate?

That debate has great significance and it needs to happen, particularly given where we are at the moment. The debate is being used by the far right in Poland. In 2017, more than 60,000 nationalists took part in a march in Warsaw to mark Poland’s independence day. Slogans included, “White Europe of brotherly nations”, “Pure Poland, white Poland” and “Refugees out”. That is what we are concerned about. It is not in any way about the form of the Polish nation or the people of Poland, who worked terrifically well during the second world war and after. The Polish community served valiantly in Birmingham in support of the Spitfire pilots and as mechanics. We commend the heroic acts of the Polish people, as the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) said. He spoke about his great-uncle, Jan Kawczynski, who made a huge sacrifice and ultimately paid the ultimate price.

[Stephen Pound]

I apologise for intervening—I realise time is short—but my hon. Friend raised an important point. He referred to slogans used by some far-right groups. Surely he would recognise that the shambling, stumbling, mono-browed knuckle-draggers of the far right of this country do not speak for our nation. They exhibit these foul, ghastly slogans, but we do not judge this country by those people. Let us please not judge Poland by a few of these unpleasant lunatics.

[Mr Mahmood]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. To clarify, I was not saying that such people represent Poland as a nation. I went further to clarify the role of the Polish people against the Nazis and the actions they took. In that sense, I fully agree with him. The rally was also attended by Tommy Robinson, the former leader of the English Defence League, who is in prison at the moment. Roberto Fiore from Italy also attended. Those people tend to gather at these things. The real issue is how we deal with that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) made the key point that there were 3.3 million Jewish people living in Poland who had property and assets. Most of the descendants of those Polish Jews now live in the United Kingdom. Clarification is still needed about the property that was originally taken by the Nazis and then nationalised by the Communist Government that followed. That issue has to be addressed if we are to address all the issues post-Nazi occupation. The law that the Polish Government have passed does not recognise the heritage of those people who live in the United Kingdom in relation to their families’ assets and properties. In that respect, a resolution calling for restitution has been passed by 46 other nations and endorsed by the US and the European Parliament. That is important, because that resolution confirms the history of the Jewish people in Poland.