Czeslawa Piotrowska's crisp Polish accent leaves people in no doubt that she hails from the cream of her country's prewar society.
Like many Poles her age, this elegant 77-year-old lady suffered the devastation of war during Nazi Germany's World War II occupation of Poland. After the war, to add insult to injury, her family's prize real estate along Warsaw's fashionable Krakowskie Przedmiescie Royal Way was seized in 1946 by Poland's postwar communist regime.
Fifty-five years later and over a decade since the collapse of communism in Poland, Czeslawa is one of an estimated quarter of a million current and former Polish citizens and their heirs still waiting for the return of property confiscated by the now defunct communist regime.
"Back then we kept quiet, we didn't dare complain - we were happy to be left alive. Now it is only just for the state to make amends for the illegal acts of the past," says Piotrowska with an air of dignified determination.
But, unlike its other former communist Central European neighbours, including the Czech Republic and Hungary, Poland has yet to agree on a comprehensive restitution scheme to compensate for postwar expropriation.
Frustrated with what they see as Warsaw's deliberate delay in making amends some claimants, including 3,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors, have taken their grievances to the courts both in Poland and the U.S..
In Poland the lawsuits have resulted in some 3,000 successful claims, while in the United States, a New York judge must decide whether to honour the property claims of the Holocaust survivors or to follow a 1999 Chicago court ruling which rejected a class action restitution suit against Poland citing its immunity as a sovereign state.
A draft restitution law currently awaiting final parliamentary and presidential approval is Poland's sixth attempt since 1991 to redress the wrongs of history.
But the draft, which foresees the return of property in kind where possible or alternatively up to 50 per cent of its equivalent value, has drawn the ire of some claimants who argue they will be short-changed a second time should it pass.
In total, government experts estimate the restitution plan will cover 170,000 claims costing the Polish state 11.5 billion dollars, over a third of its current annual budget and the equivalent of 10 per cent of national assets.
Fear over the impact the costs may have on the economy has sent public support for restitution plummeting, with 48 per cent of the public opposing the move compared to 38 per cent voicing approval.
Observers say the volatile combination of costs and fears in a parliamentary election year could lead politicians to adopt a version of the draft limiting the scope of eligible claimants to include only those who currently hold Polish citizenship or alternatively to an outright presidential veto.
Analysts also warn that either move would cause a furor among claimants, leading to a barrage of law suits that could seriously compromise Poland's reputation abroad.
An estimated 10 to 15 per cent of claimants are Polish Jews whose property was first seized by Nazi Germany following its World War II occupation of Poland in 1939, and subsequently by Poland's communist regime after the war. The vast majority of these Holocaust survivors currently live abroad, are no longer Polish citizens and therefore would not be eligible for restitution should the restricted version of the draft be adopted.
Miroslaw Szypowski, head of the Warsaw-based OPOR national restitution lobby minces no words when bringing Poland's restitution dilemma into sharp focus.
"If this blanket law is not passed we can flood the courts with claims. If we win, it would mean the end of the Polish state - it would spell bankruptcy," Szypowski told Deutsche Presse Agentur dpa in a recent interview.
Government experts are acutely aware that the price of failure to pass a comprehensive law could prove crippling, with the global sum of damages from potential law suits expected to reach a massive 65 billion dollars.