It is a well-known fact that many Poles eagerly helped the Nazis round up Jews during WWII, but 40 of them went far beyond that when the burned hundreds of Jews alive in the town of Jedwabne. And in recent years there has been an alarming resurgence of anti-Semitic acts in Poland as well as in the rest of Europe.
VANDALS SCRAWL ‘THEY WERE FLAMMABLE’ AT SPOT WHERE HUNDREDS OF JEWS WERE BURNED ALIVE DURING WORLD WAR II
By Joanna Corrigan
Mail Online
September 1, 2011
Vandals have desecrated a monument marking the spot in Poland where hundreds of Jews were burned alive during World War II.
They defaced the stonework, scrawling 'they were flammable' and also daubing a swastika on the memorial.
The monument in the eastern town of Jedwabne honours the victims of July 10, 1941, when about 40 Poles hunted down Jews, closed them in a barn and set it alight. It is estimated between 300 and 400 Jews were killed.
The incident is one of the better known cases of local people collaborating with the Nazis in the killing of Jews during the occupation of Eastern Europe.
The vandals used green paint to spray the symbols of a swastika and 'SS' - the name of an elite Nazi force - on the monument, as well as the phrases 'I don't apologise for Jedwabne' and 'they were flammable'.
Police discovered the desecration on Wednesday during a patrol and have since started an investigation.
Poland's Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said: 'I utterly condemn these acts of criminality, alien to Polish tradition.
'There is no room for such behavior in Polish society - even if it is the work of but a small group of extremists.'
He expressed solidarity with anyone affected by the act, and said he was convinced the perpetrators would be tracked down soon and face justice.
The head of Poland's Jewish community, Piotr Kadlcik, called on authorities to crack down harder on anti-Semitic incidents, saying the desecration at Jedwabne comes after authorities have treated such cases with leniency for years.
The massacre was unknown for decades but came to light with the 2000 book 'Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland,' which sparked outrage and soul-searching in Poland.
It led to a government investigation that confirmed that Poles - and not Nazi Germans - were to blame for the killings.
Poland's then-president Aleksander Kwasniewski apologised for his country's sins, but some Poles today remain in denial that such horrors were committed by their own people.
Polish people are today commemorating the anniversary of the German attack on their country on Sept. 1, 1939, that marked the start of World War II.
Poland was home to Europe's largest Jewish population of some 2.5million until the conflict began, when most of its Jewish citizens perished in the Nazi-sponsored Holocaust.
The few who survived the war faced periodic oppression by the communist regime installed in Poland after 1945.
Poland is a largely homogenous Roman Catholic country but religious and ethnic minorities are more common in eastern regions near the borders with Belarus and Ukraine.
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