Representatives of millions of Poles whose property was seized during and after World War II are calling on the government to compensate them.

They met May 16 for a national congress that lashed out at the Cabinet of Prime Minister Donald Tusk for recently abandoning a plan to partly compensate families — many of them Jewish — whose property was confiscated by the Nazis and the subsequent communist regime.

The government argued it cannot afford even partial compensation.

Miroslaw Szypowski — the head of an organization of dispossessed property owners — said some 3 million owners and their inheritors are entitled to land, houses and business estimated to be worth around $35 billion. — ap