a 1941 massacre by changing the inscription of a monument in the northeastern village of Jedwabne where the atrocities took place, Polish media reported Sunday July 14.
Yad Vashem, backed by Jewish communities in Poland and abroad, made the demands following revelations this week that Poles, not Germans, were responsible for the killings of an estimated 1600 Jews in the village, about 155 kilometres (97 miles), northeast of the capital Warsaw.
The Polish Institute for National Remembrance released the results of a two-year investigation that accused about 40 Poles of the Jewish people under German "inspiration" in Jedwabne. In his book "Neighbours", Polish American writer Jan Tomas Gross suggests the frenzy of blood-letting lasted eight hours as Jewish men, woman and children were burned in a barn.
PRIME MINISTER DISAGREES
But Poland’s Prime Minister Leszek Miller said on a Sunday radio show that he disagrees with Yad Vashem that the text of a new memorial in Jedwabne should be changed immediately so that it explicitly mentions the Polish responsibility for the massacre. Written in Polish, Hebrew and Yiddish, it currently reads: "To the memory of Jews from Jedwabne and the surrounding area, men, women and children, inhabitants of this land who were murdered and burned alive on this spot on 10 July, 1941".
The Reuters news agency quoted Miller as telling private Radio Zet that he believes that "Yad Vashem was in a big hurry calling for a change" in the inscription the very next day. "This is a very painful page in our history," Miller added.
President Aleksander Kwasniewski, who publicly apologized for the pogrom when the Jedwabne monument was dedicated last year, called Yad Vashem’s demand "insensitive," the private TVN-24 channel reported on Saturday, July 13.
MEMORIAL IN JERUSALEM
Yad Vashem oversees a memorial in Jerusalem to the six million Jews killed in the Nazi Holocaust and sponsors related research and education programs. Jewish leaders and some Christian organizations have also criticized Polish and other church leaders for not doing enough to speak out against anti-Semitism and atrocities such as the Jedwabne massacre.
Last year, Poland’s senior churchman, Cardinal Jozef Glemp, even suggested that Jews should first apologize to the Poles for collaborating with the Soviet occupiers. And the local Parish priest of Jedwabne, Father Edward Orlowski, boycotted the ceremony commemorating the 60th anniversary of the massacre in 2001, which he as part of "a Holocaust business."
The International Christian Embassy Jerusalem and other organizations are increasingly encouraging church officials to embrace and realize the Jewish heritage of Christians in Jesus Christ, who the Bible says, was born in Bethlehem.
