Anti-Jewish violence in Poland, 1944–1946

Property claims and restitution "On Abandoned Real Estate", a 6 May 1945 restitution law, allowed property owners who had been dispossessed or their relatives and heirs to reclaim private property under a simplified inheritance procedure. The law was in effect until the end of 1948. An expedited court process, with minimal costs, was put in place to handle claims. Applications had to be examined within 21 days, and many claims were processed the day they were filed. The Communist government enacted legislation on "abandoned property", placing severe limitations not present in pre-war inheritance law (which allowed inheritance by second-degree relatives) and limiting restitution to the original owners or direct heirs. The initial 1945 decrees were superseded by a 1946 law with a claim deadline of 31 December 1947 (later extended to 31 December 1948), after which property devolved to the Polish state. Even if Jews regained de jure control, additional lengthy proceedings were required when it was occupied by Poles. Most Jewish claimants could not afford the restitution process without financial help, due to filing costs, legal fees, and inheritance tax. Jewish property was unclaimed because some Jews were murdered when they sought to reclaim family property and most Jews left postwar Poland. The murders intimidated Jews against filing claims. Unclaimed Jewish property devolved to the Polish state on 31 December 1948, but many Jews who had fled to the Soviet Union were not repatriated until after that date. Polish legislation in 1947 severely restricted intestate succession, limiting inheritance by distant family members. Jews who returned to Poland from the Soviet Union and settled in territories Poland acquired from Germany were entitled to material compensation on an equal footing with ethnic Poles who were displaced from eastern Poland. Although it is difficult to estimate how many Jews got their property back, the number was probably few. Holocaust survivors and returnees Polish Jewish survivors of the Nazi Holocaust who returned home were fearful of being physically assaulted, robbed and murdered. ==Pogroms==

The prewar Polish intelligentsia ceased to exist. Of a 1946 population of 23.7 million, only 40,000 university graduates (less than 0.2 percent of the general population) survived the war. Britain demanded that Poland and other countries halt the Jewish exodus, but their pressure was largely unsuccessful. ==Number of victims==

A statistical compendium of "Jewish deaths by violence for which specific record is extant, by month and province" was compiled by David Engel for the Yad Vashem Shoah Resource Center's International School for Holocaust Studies. In the Yad Vashem Studies paper, Holocaust historian David Engel wrote: Studying case records, Engel wrote that the compilation of cases is not exhaustive. He suggested that cases of anti-Jewish violence were selectively reported and recorded, and that there was no centralized, systematic effort to record these cases. Engel cited a number of incidental reports of killings of Jews for which no official reports survived, concluding that the figures have "obvious weaknesses"; the records used to compile them are deficient, and lack data from the Białystok region. He cited one source with 108 Jewish deaths during March 1945, and another source showing 351 deaths between November 1944 and December 1945. ==See also==