Yad Vashem Urges Poland to Remove ‘Offensive’ Jedwabne Plaques
Jerusalem, 10 July, 2025 (TPS-IL) -- (PAP) – The Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum is shocked and concerned by the desecration of historical truth and memory in Jedwabne, where recently installed plaques are apparently intended to distort the history of the Jews murdered there, the Jerusalem institution said on Thursday.
“Yad Vashem calls on the relevant Polish authorities to remove this offensive installation and to ensure that the historical significance of this site is preserved and respected,” the institute said in a statement posted on social media.
The Israeli institution recalled that 84 years ago, on July 10, 1941, during the German aggression and occupation of eastern Poland, the inhabitants of Jedwabne and the surrounding area took part in the brutal murder of hundreds of their Jewish neighbors.
“This terrible crime has been thoroughly documented through decades of rigorous historical research and numerous eyewitness testimonies,” stressed the Yad Vashem Institute, which researches the Holocaust and commemorates its victims.
The Jerusalem institution stressed that attempts to deny or distort these events are not only a blatant falsification of history and an attempt to absolve the perpetrators, but also constitute a deep insult to the victims and threaten to “dangerously blur Polish historical and moral responsibility.”
Only by acknowledging and commemorating the darkest chapters of history can we hope that such atrocities will never be repeated, the statement said.
On Thursday, on a private plot of land adjacent to the official monument commemorating the victims of the murder of Jews in Jedwabne, nationalist groups opened their own memorial site, the Monument to the Truth about the Jedwabne Massacre. It consists of eight large boulders with metal plaques and inscriptions indicating the crime was committed by the Germans.
According to the findings of an investigation conducted by the Institute of National Remembrance, on July 10, 1941, in Jedwabne, a group of Poles murdered at least 340 Jewish neighbors. Most of them—women, men, and children—were burned alive in a barn. The IPN believes the crime was instigated by Germans. Numerous witnesses interviewed pointed to uniformed Germans who arrived in Jedwabne that day.
