OVER 2,600 NATIONALIZED WARSAW PROPERTIES ARE LOOKING FOR HEIRS

This web page provides below, in an alphabetical table of announcements published by the City of Warsaw, Poland (the “City”) of Warsaw properties nationalized without compensation, concerning which certain applicants [whose present whereabouts are unknown to the City] (“Applicants”) filed administrative claims, but did not proceed to resolution.

The table below is based on announcements (“Announcements”) published by the City. As of January 7, 2021 the City has published 308 such Announcements — generally one per property. Such Announcements are expected for at least 2,613 Warsaw properties, as we explain below.

Over 5 years ago, the combined value of uncompensated nationalized Warsaw properties was estimated at around 75 Billion Zlotys (around 18.5 Billion USD). We believe that as of 2019, their value is well over 25.0 Billion USD.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION WHICH SHOULD BE READ FIRST

Relevant properties may be researched on this web page in two ways:

The information available here concerns some of the Warsaw properties, which were taken (without compensation) by the Polish government after WW2. The reason for mentioning these specific properties is the "Law of June 25, 2015". This information is based on government sources mentioned herein. We cannot guarantee its accuracy or completeness. We provide this information as a free service to interested parties, particularly owners and heirs of nationalized Warsaw properties.
 

BACKGROUND

On October 26, 1945, shortly after the end of WW2, the government of Poland, then a Communist country, passed the so-called Bierut Decree. This decree resulted in the nationalization of practically all real properties in Warsaw and some in Greater Warsaw.

Warsaw is the capital of Poland. Today Warsaw proper has a population of around 1.7 million people and approximately 200 square miles of terrain (517 square kilometers). Metropolitan Warsaw's population (the Greater Warsaw) is around 2.6 million people and approximately 390 square miles of terrain (1,014 square kilometers).  

Generally, Warsaw real estate is much more valuable than elsewhere in Poland, including in other large Polish cities.

Communism ended in Poland in 1989. However, Poland did not pass a general restitution (re-privatization) law. This means that individual Communist era nationalization decisions can only be overturned via individual legal actions, in which the claimant proves that the nationalization of his property was implemented in a manner so defective that it is invalid. Actually, such defects were common. See the web page Getting it Back – Reversing Nationalization or Expropriation on our present web site for more details.

The recovery of Warsaw real estate is generally easier, though the City fights hard to keep it, because of high Warsaw property values.

The advantage held by claimants to Warsaw properties comes from the June 13, 2011 judgment of the Constitutional Tribunal of Poland.

In essence, this judgment states that — as regards multi-dwelling and commercial properties larger than a single dwelling, nationalized under the Bierut Decree — the law of September 21, 1997, which excluded indemnification for such properties was unconstitutional ^(17). This judgment resulted in several thousand claims filed since June 2011. This is in addition to thousands of claims filed before.

Many claimants recover in Warsaw old buildings or empty lots. However, indemnification is more common, due to the massive wartime destruction of the part of Warsaw on the left bank of the Vistula (Wisła) river. Thus, most Warsaw claims concern lots of land, on which formerly stood buildings, which were destroyed during WW2. Since the war, new buildings were erected on such land by government or other parties. For such land, the City pays indemnification — but only after a fight.

THE NEW LAW PRESENTLY BEING IMPLEMENTED

In August 2016, the President of Poland signed into law a 2015 statute (the “June 25, 2015 Law”), which makes it possible for owners or heirs of certain real properties in Warsaw to obtain restitution for these assets – via reactivation of post-war administrative claims filed by them or their legal predecessors. 

The June 25, 2015 Law concerns only those Warsaw properties, concerning which Applicants filed administrative claims (primarily in the early post-war years) but did not proceed further to resolution, that is the dormant claims. In addition, present whereabouts / addresses of these Applicants are unknown to the City.

Given the passage of time, we believe most of these Applicants have passed away but left heirs, whose identity and whereabouts are also unknown to the City.

The June 25, 2015 Law sets a procedure to dispose of these old administrative claims, which became dormant. To start with, the City publishes such claims via Announcements (one per property) in certain Polish newspapers and on the City's web site. They remain on the City's web site for only thirty (30) days.

Per Appendix 2 of the City’s White Book of June 2016, it was originally expected, indeed almost directly promised, that the City will publish Announcements concerning 2,613 properties, concerning which dormant post-war Applications exist. However, as of October 2019, around 20% of the Announcements actually published concern properties, which are not mentioned in the said Appendix 2. Therefore and for other reasons, we expect the real number of properties, concerning which dormant post-war Applications exist, is far larger than the 2,613 listed in Appendix 2.

The City published the first group of Announcements concerning forty-eight (48) properties on February 22, 2017 and subsequent smaller groups since. On this webpage we tabulate the information in the Announcements as they are published.

To benefit from the June 25, 2015 Law, heirs to any property mentioned in the Announcements must do the following:

FURTHER DETAILS

Polish is the only official language for proceedings before Polish courts and agencies of Polish government. All documents in foreign languages must be submitted together with Polish translations prepared by a translator licensed by the Polish Ministry of Justice. Beforehand, these documents must be certified and authenticated generally in countries of origin, and in some cases by notaries in other countries.

Some documents are irreplaceable. In general, claimants should not ship original documents without retaining copies notarized in a way that is accepted in Poland.    

For these and other reasons, for foreign claimants, fully documenting the succession through 3 or 4 generations (typically from late 1930s) is practically impossible within three months.
 
Therefore, and because the second deadline (the three months) is counted from the date of filing the revived claim, it seems wise to file this claim not long before the expiration of the first six month period, and to use as much as possible of the combined nine-month (6 + 3) period to generate a strong proof of claim.

In many or most of the cases, present day claimants will also have to conduct in Poland succession proceedings — from the last registered owner, through the chain of inheritance, right up to the presently living heirs. If any family member in the statutory chain of succession died in the war or the Holocaust, without the death certificate having been issued, claimants must also apply to a Polish court to declare that person as deceased.

For foreign heirs, from commencement to completion such proceedings typically take several years. However, the filing of reasonably documented proceedings of this nature legitimizes claimants in recovery cases — subject to final succession judgments, of course.

Such succession related matters are, at the core, no different in Poland than in other countries. It is mainly the distance in generations (typically 3 or 4) and in time, changes of names and changes in spelling of names, sometimes the need to locate or replace missing documents, the need to carefully authenticate and translate foreign documents, that make these succession efforts laborious. If the relevant property is valuable, the effort is worthwhile.

READING OUR TABLE

As appears from the tabulation below, our web site is being periodically updated for the City’s on-going Announcements. They are tabulated on this web page in two columns — by last name and by property address.

To assist interested parties, our table provides those last names of Applicants and those street names, which include Polish letters (ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź, ż) both in the Polish spelling and in the Anglicized spelling, which uses only English letters. We precede the latter spelling with “Eng.”

The information in our table comes from publications by the City, available from its bilingual (Polish and English) web site:

• Polish text: http://bip.warszawa.pl/default.htm. This is the source text, from which the City derived its English translation.
• English text: http://bip.warszawa.pl/English/default.htm. We found in this English text some translation errors, which make it more difficult to understand; and in some cases convey a different meaning from the Polish source text. The table we publish here in English, corrects those translation errors we detected.

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