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Tonight, Michael Buchanan reports for us from...well, Poland. Here are some of his words and pictures:

"Amid all the obsession about property prices, spare a thought for those people in Poland who still don't have a house they can truly call their own. Communism resulted in all property being nationalised and though its almost 20 years since the collapse of that system, unlike other former Soviet-bloc countries, Poland has never been able to find a way of returning property to those who lost out or indeed compensating them. So people like Piotr Sokolowski still can't claim ownership of this smart villa in central Warsaw that his grandmother once owned.

There are claims on almost 90,000 such properties in Poland, a minority of which come from the country's once thriving Jewish population. Before the Second World War, Poland was home to Europe's largest Jewish population - 3.5 million people - but 90% of them didn't survive.

Today there is growing interest in the country's Jewish heritage and culture. This klezmer band

were playing at one of the many festivals and events that have sprung up in recent years. The festival they were playing at was taking place in the town of Kazimierz Dolny,

which once had a large Jewish population, started - according to local legend - because a former Polish king once had a mistress from the town called Ester!
But despite the burgeoning interest, some Jews in Poland feel that anti-semitism has contributed to Poland's inability to come up with a compensation package. And the cost of not doing so increases every year. The latest estimate suggest the government would have to spend a quarter of its entire national budget to fully compensate all claimants. The government isn't going to pay that much out but has vowed to finally address the issue soon.

Finally a picture to cheer us all up on this miserable Monday. As I was ambling through central Warsaw, Dorota and Rafal were getting married at the historic St Anne's Church.


This was a vertible conveyor belt of matrimony - later on, this car was parked outside the same church waiting for another newly-wed couple."

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