STATEMENTS REGARDING DESECRATION OF THE SITE
OF JEDWABNE & HOLOCAUST
DENIAL BY GRZEGORZ BRAUN
THE UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL AND MUSEUM is outraged by the desecration of the memorial site to the victims of the Jedwabne massacre and the violent disruption of the commemoration of the event. The monument commemorates victims of the massacre carried out on July 10, 1941, when Polish residents of Jedwabne, a small town located in then German-occupied Poland, participated in the murder of several hundred of their Jewish neighbors. These facts have been documented and agreed upon by serious historians in Poland and beyond for many years.
The site desecration involved the placing of seven large boulders with plaques bearing revisionist and antisemitic texts next to the monument. Demonstrators disrupted this year’s memorial commemoration of the massacre using loudspeakers and a denialist film, while threatening Jews who had gathered for the observation. The incident coincided with the antisemitic denial of the Holocaust by Polish MP Grzegorz Braun, who stated in a radio interview, “Ritual murder is a fact, and Auschwitz with gas chambers is a fake,” evoking the centuries-old blood libel myth. This rhetoric is especially dangerous coming from an elected leader. Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński, Director of the Auschwitz Memorial, appropriately described this as a "conscious lie and an act of ideological, antisemitic hatred."
These events require immediate decisive action to condemn and hold accountable those responsible.
YAD VASHEM is profoundly shocked and deeply concerned by the desecration of historical truth and memory at the Jedwabne memorial site in Poland, where new plaques were recently installed in an apparent attempt to distort the story of the massacre of Jews.
On July 10, 1941, amid the German offensive and the occupation of eastern Poland, local residents from Jedwabne and the surrounding area took part in the brutal murder of hundreds of their Jewish neighbors. This horrific crime has been thoroughly documented through decades of rigorous historical research and numerous survivor and eyewitness testimonies.
Attempts to deny or misrepresent these events are not only a blatant falsification of history and an effort to absolve the perpetrators, but also a profound affront to the victims and a dangerous erosion of Poland’s historical and moral responsibility.
Yad Vashem calls on the relevant Polish authorities to remove this offensive installation and to ensure that the historical meaning of the site is preserved and respected. Only by acknowledging and commemorating the darkest chapters of the past can we hope to prevent such atrocities from ever happening again.
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