Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial is urging Polish authorities to remove newly installed plaques near a monument to the 1941 Jedwabne massacre, denouncing them as a “desecration of historical truth” that obscures the role of Polish villagers in the murder of hundreds of Jews.

Thursday marks the 84th anniversary of the Jedwabne massacre, in which Polish villagers in the northeastern town of Jedwabne — then under German occupation — locked hundreds of their Jewish neighbors, including women and children, in a barn and burned them alive on July 10, 1941.

Funded by a crowdfunding campaign, Polish journalist Wojciech Sumliński is leading the revisionist initiative, which disputes the official historical account, asserting that the Jedwabne massacre was carried out by a German pacification unit rather than local Polish residents.

The new installation, located on private property adjacent to the memorial, features seven boulders with signs in both English and Polish.

Part of a larger campaign, which includes a film titled “Return to Jedwabne,” the effort aims to expose what the Polish journalist called “the growing defamation of Poland by Jewish groups,” which is “financially destroying the future and the dignity of our country’s past,” he said.

“The absurd accusations and claims made by Jewish communities pose a deadly threat to our identity, our destiny, and that of future generations — our children’s generation,” Sumliński said in a statement.

“We chose Jedwabne,” the statement continued, “because this small town in Podlasie, due to its global spotlight driven by Jewish communities, has become the focal point in the battle over our ancestors’ legacy: whether they will be remembered, as these groups claim, as murderers and Nazis — or, as the facts indicate, as heroes and victims of Nazism.”

Yad Vashem — the leading global institution for Holocaust research, documentation, education, and commemoration — condemned the campaign and urged Polish authorities to remove the offensive installation and to protect the historical integrity and meaning of the site.

“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,” the statement read.

“This horrific crime has been thoroughly documented through decades of rigorous historical research and numerous survivor and eyewitness testimonies,” the institution said.

“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,” it continued.

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 10 July 1941, amid…

— Yad Vashem (@yadvashem) July 10, 2025

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