Memorial desecrated
September 1, 2011
A monument commemorating Jews killed in Poland during World War II was desecrated with swastikas and green paint on Thursday, the latest in a series of attacks targeting minorities.
Unknown suspects covered the Jedwabne monument with Nazi symbols and spray painted on a nearby fence, "I am not sorry for Jedwabne," and, "They were flammable."
Jedwabne, in eastern Poland, was the site of the massacre of at least 340 Polish Jews when Nazi officers oversaw a group of ethnic Poles who locked the victims in a barn and burned them alive.
The exact details of the killings went unacknowledged until, in 2004, a Polish government investigation found that Poles, and not German Nazi, were to blame.
A monument was erected at the site to commemorate the pogrom on its 60th anniversary.
Local police said they were investigating the attack in connection with a series of recent incidents targeting Lithuanians and Muslims, after an Islamic cultural center in the nearby city of Bialystock was attacked.
Author: Darren Mara (AP, dpa)
Editor: Nancy Isenson