New ‘information center’ in Polish town denies murders of Jews by local Poles in 1941

The Jerusalem Post, in covering international affairs, often finds itself reporting on historical narratives that clash with established facts, particularly when those narratives serve contemporary political agendas. The opening of a new "information center" in Jedwabne, Poland, which actively denies the well-documented massacre of Jews by local Poles during World War II, is a stark example of such a conflict.

“

We call it a denial museum, because that’s what it is.

Historians and the Polish Institute of National Remembrance have confirmed the horrific events of July 10, 1941, where Polish residents murdered hundreds of their Jewish neighbors. This event, detailed in Jan Tomasz Gross's seminal work "Neighbors," became a symbol of Polish complicity in the Holocaust, a difficult truth that has sparked intense national debate. The official apology by former president Aleksander Kwasniewski in 2001 marked a moment of national reckoning.

“

Putting these containers in Jedwabne [is] further desecrating the only remnants of Jewish community left there, our family’s legacy there.

However, the emergence of this "denial museum," as described by Abraham Waserstein, whose grandfather survived the massacre, represents a disturbing resurgence of revisionist history. Promoted by right-wing activists and seemingly aligned with a political current that views historical research on Polish complicity as slander, this center actively seeks to erase or distort the memory of the Jedwabne pogrom. For the descendants of victims and those committed to historical truth, this is not merely a disagreement over facts but a profound desecration of memory and a dangerous attempt to rewrite a painful chapter of Polish history.

“

Szmul Wasersztein was among a handful of Jews who escaped on July 10, 1941, when Polish residents rounded up and killed hundreds of their Jewish neighbors, mostly by burning them alive in a barn.