After World War II and coming to power of the communist government in Poland, large scale nationalization occurred.
Following the fall of communism in Poland in 1989, some of the formerly nationalized property have been subject to reprivatisation and restored to previous owners, their heirs or other claimants.
After the Polish Communist government came to power in 1944, it also adopted a policy of large scale nationalization of property in what constituted Poland after the War.
Communist officials did not conceal this, the formulators of the law argued that it was necessary to prevent wealth concentration in the hands of "unproductive and parasite factors".
Unclaimed Jewish property devolved to the Polish state on 31 December 1948, but many Jews who had fled to the Soviet Union were only repatriated after this date.
[9] After the fall of Communism in 1989, the issue of restitution of property that had been confiscated during the War and nationalised after the War resurfaced, with a number of parties, both domestic (such as the Roman Catholic Church in Poland) and international (such as the Jewish diaspora), claiming that they were unfairly treated in the past and insisting that the issue be revisited.
One of those treaties was with the United States, signed on 16 July 1960, that allowed all compensation claims of US citizens to be directed to and dealt with by the US government.
[30] Restoration of property to the Roman Catholic Church, argued to be the biggest beneficiary, has been criticized as unduly favoring that institution.
[11][10][33] In 2011 a Polish tenant right activist, Jolanta Brzeska [pl], died in suspicious circumstances, sparking another controversy.
[39][40] US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had also spoken out against the law, and urged Poland “to develop a clear, efficient and effective legal procedure to resolve confiscated property claims and provide some measure of justice for victims.