Poland has cancelled a visit by an Israeli delegation over suggestions it would focus on the issue of returning former Jewish property.

The delegation was due to be headed by Avi Cohen-Scali, director general of the Israeli Ministry for Social Equality, and was scheduled for Monday.

Poland’s Foreign Ministry announced the cancellation on Sunday and claimed “the Israeli side made last-minute changes in the composition of the delegation suggesting that the talks would primarily focus on the issues related to property restitution”.

Former Jewish property in Poland has emerged as an emotional issue during campaigning ahead of European parliament elections this month and national elections later this year.

Poland was once home to 3.3 million Jews, but most were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust and their properties were often looted and later nationalised by the communist regime.

Remembering the Holocaust Show all 16 1 /16 Remembering the Holocaust Remembering the Holocaust 80,000 shoes line a display case in Auschwitz I. The shoes of those who had been sent to their deaths were transported back to Germany for use of the Third Reich Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Barracks for prisoners in the vast Auschwitz II (Birkenau) camp. Here slept as many as four per bunk, translating to around one thousand people per barracks. The barracks were never heated in winter, so the living space of inmates would have been the same temperature as outside. Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Sign for the Auschwitz Museum on the snowy streets of Oswiecim, Poland Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust The Gateway to hell: The Nazi proclamation that work will set you free, displayed on the entrance gate of Auschwitz I Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust A disused watchtower, surveying a stark tree-lined street through Auschwitz I concentration camp Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Stolen property of the Jews: Numerous spectacles, removed from the possession of their owners when they were selected to die in the gas chambers of Auschwitz Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust A sign bearing a skull and crossbones barks an order to a person to stop beside the once-electrified fences which reinforced the Auschwitz I camp Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust The peace and the evil: Flower tributes line a section of wall which was used for individual and group executions Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Life behind bars: Nazi traps set to hold the Third Reich’s ‘enemies’. In Auschwitz’s years of operation, there were around three hundred successful escapes. A common punishment for an escape attempt was death by starvation Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Burying the evidence: Remains of one of the several Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust The three-way railway track at the entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. This was the first sight the new camp arrivals saw upon completion of their journey. Just beside the tracks, husbands and wives, sons and daughters and brothers and sisters were torn from each other. Most never saw their relatives again Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust A group of visitors move through the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Viewed from the main entrance watchtower of Auschwitz-Birkenau Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust "The Final Solution": The scale of the extermination efforts of the Nazis at Auschwitz-Birkenau can be seen by comparing the scale of the two figures at the far left of the image to the size of the figure to the left of the railway tracks' three point split Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Each cattle car would transport up to one hundred people, who could come from all over Europe, sometimes from as far away as Norway or Greece. Typically, people would have been loaded onto the trucks with around three days food supply. The journey to Auschwitz could sometimes take three weeks. Hannah Bills

Some Jewish organisations have been seeking restitution of former Jewish properties.

On Saturday, thousands of nationalists marched in Warsaw to the US Embassy to protest American pressure on Poland to settle the outstanding matter of unpaid restitution.

The protest took place amid a dramatic rise in antisemitic hate speech in Poland and it appeared to be one of the largest anti-Jewish street demonstrations in recent times.

It also comes as far-right groups are gaining in popularity, pressuring the conservative government to move further to the right.

Poland was occupied by Nazi Germany during the Second World War, suffering extensive material losses, and those protesting argue it is not fair to ask Poland to compensate Jewish victims when Poland has never received adequate compensation from Germany.

Poland is the only EU country that has not passed legislation regulating the compensation or restitution of property lost as a result of the war and communism. A string of governments have said it cannot afford to do so.

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Poland’s right-wing government had been vowing to make demands on Germany and saying it would not pay any compensation for Jewish claims.