Jedwabne Massacre Monument Defaced with Swastikas

Vandals have desecrated a monument marking the spot in Poland where hundreds of Jews were burned alive during World War II.

According to local police, the unknown suspects used green spray paint to draw symbols of a swastika and write “SS” – the name of an elite Nazi force – on the monument, as well as the phrases “I don’t apologize for Jedwabne” and “they were flammable.”

“I utterly condemn these acts of criminality, alien to Polish tradition,” Poland’s Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said in a statement. “There is no room for such behavior in Polish society — even if it is the work of but a small group of extremists.”

The special monument, which resides in the Eastern Polish city of Jedwabne, was built to honor the victims of a July 10, 1941, massacre in which 40 Poles hunted down Jews, closed them in a barn, and then set it ablaze.

Records show that between 300 and 400 Jews were killed in the tragic event – just one of the many notorious cases where local people collaborated with the Nazis in killing Jews during the Nazis’ wartime occupation of much of Eastern Europe.

A monument was erected at the site ten years ago, on the 60th anniversary of the Jedwabne pogrom. Then-president Aleksander Kwasniewski apologized on behalf of Poland for the horrific crime.

Via Jerusalem Post
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