Vandals litter Jewish memorial in Poland honoring World War II victims with Nazi graffiti



A monument commemorating the pogrom of Jews in the village of Jedwabne, Poland, is found vandalized

Polish police were hunting Thursday for the vandals who desecrated a monument in a rural village where local Jews were burned alive by their neighbors during World War II.

"They were highly flammable," the bigots wrote in green paint on the dark gray slabs, punctuating the hateful message with a Nazi swastika.

"I don't apologize for Jedwabne," another message read.

Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said he was outraged by the outburst of anti-Semitism in Jedwabne and vowed to hunt down the perpetrators.

"This is a perfect example of vandalism and stupidity," added Andrzej Baranowski, spokesman for the police in the nearby city of Bialystok.

The monument was erected in memory of the 300 to 400 Jews who were murdered while the village was occupied by Nazi invaders in July 1941. They were herded into a barn that was set ablaze.

For years, the Jedwabne pogrom was thought to be the work of the Germans. Then, a decade ago, Princeton history professor Jan Tomasz Gross published a book asserting that local Poles were responsible.

That ignited a nationwide debate over the Holocaust in a country where 6 million Poles - half of them Jewish - perished during the Nazi occupation.

A Polish government probe corrobated most of Gross' findings - and prompted a public apology from then-president Aleksander Kwasniewski to the Jewish community.

Still, a small minority of right wing Poles still refuse to accept their people were involved in the pogrom and have questioned Gross' scholarship and motives.

Gross' father was a Polish Jew who was hidden from the Nazis during the war by his Polish gentile wife.

The Jedwabne desecration came as Poland marked the anniversary of the German attack on Sept. 1, 1939, that touched off World War II.