Events After 2004
At a round-table discussion on July 7, 2006, Jan T. Gross said, "I repeat three times in the book (Neighbors) that the murder happened by order of the Germans" ("mord był z rozkazu Niemców").
In 2009, Polish politician Michał Kamiński was attacked by the Labour Party (UK), and some British journalists, for having opposed a national apology for the Jedwabne massacre in 2001. The criticism came shortly after Kaminski was made chairman of the European Conservatives and Reformists group in the European Parliament, which includes Labour's opponent, the Conservative Party (UK). Kaminski denied his opposition to the apology was derived from anti-Semitism, and has been defended by the Conservatives and some journalists including the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard.
A 2009 play Our Class by Polish playwright Tadeusz Słobodzianek, performed in Britain. deals with a massacre of Jews by Poles in a small town during the Holocaust and is based on the Jedwabne massacre, though it does not mention Jedwabne by name. A review in The Daily Telegraph argued that the play misrepresented Poles as "just itching for the German invasion as the excuse to give violent vent to their deep-rooted anti-Semitism" and "too often looked like an object lesson in gross simplification."
On July 11, 2011 the President of Poland, Bronislaw Komorowski asked for forgiveness at a ceremony to mark the 70th anniversary of the Jedwabne massacre. At the time of the event, Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants stated that "Holocaust survivors view Jedwabne as a symbol of the widespread, but little acknowledged, collaboration by the local population in the countries occupied by the Nazis in the slaughter and the plunder of the Jews during World War II." and that "The ceremonies today at Jedwabne is a welcome and important step in the confrontation with the truth by the Polish nation."
It was reported on September 1, 2011 that the memorial to the Jedwabne pogrom had been defaced with a swastika and graffiti that read "They were flammable" and "I don't apologize for Jedwabne." Poland launched an anti-hate crime investigation involving the country's domestic intelligence agency, the ABW. Poland's President Bronisław Komorowski condemned the vandalism. Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski stated: "I utterly condemn these acts of criminality, alien to Polish tradition. There is no room for such behavior in Polish society." Michael Schudrich, the Chief Rabbi of Poland, said the use of the Nazi swastika by vandals was anti-Polish as well as anti-Semitic, and that "Non-Jewish Poles also suffered horribly under the Nazis... the vast majority of Poles are appalled by what’s just happened."
Read more about this topic: Jedwabne Pogrom
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“The system was breaking down. The one who had wandered alone past so many happenings and events began to feel, backing up along the primal vein that led to his center, the beginning of hiccup that would, if left to gather, explode the center to the extremities of life, the suburbs through which one makes one’s way to where the country is.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)