When Jews gathered this week for the anniversary of a World War II massacre in the Polish town of Jedwabne, they saw a new installation — one that denied a historical consensus about the grievous events that unfolded there, JTA reported.
At the same time, a far-right lawmaker interrupted the memorial gathering — and triggered a police investigation by calling the gas chambers at Auschwitz “fake.”
July 10 marked 84 years since the crimes in Jedwabne, a town of less than 2,000 people northeast of Warsaw. In 1941, local residents killed hundreds of their Jewish neighbors, most of them in a barn where they were burned alive.
The story gained recognition through “Neighbors,” a 2000 book by historian Jan Tomasz Gross. It became a symbol of Polish collaboration in the Holocaust and prompted a presidential apology in 2001.
An official investigation by Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance confirmed in 2002 that the murder was carried out by Poles.
But Jedwabne has become a flashpoint in Polish politics, with some far-right politicians claiming it was Germans who perpetrated the massacre and characterizing research on Polish complicity as part of an effort to slander their nation.
