Restitution group launches Warsaw database to counter limiting legislation

Responding to legislation deemed harmful to efforts to return privately owned Jewish property in Warsaw, a major restitution group says it will builda database to facilitate claims.

The World Jewish Restitution Organization, or WJRO, announces the new tool three months after regulations went into effect that drastically limited the window for filing claims for property nationalized by the Polish government directly after the Holocaust, in which 90 percent of Polish Jewry was murdered. The regulations were based on recent legislation that gave prospective claimants of Warsaw property six months to come forward, the WJRO says.

“To help property owners and their families, WJRO has created a unique new searchable database that for the first time puts together a number of historical records from Warsaw and allows a search for a property using an address or a family name,” the organization says in a statement.

Last June, the City of Warsaw published a list of 2,613 street addresses for open property claims, but without the names of the owners. WJRO’s database matches the street addresses with property owners’ names found in the 1939-40 Homeowners Directory for Warsaw or, where that was not possible, with the 1930 Homeowners Directory as well as through use of mortgage information, WJRO says.

— JTA