WARSAW, Poland – Investigators completed the partial exhumation Monday of a mass grave of Jews massacred in 1941 by their Polish neighbors, the prosecutor supervising the operation said.
The exhumation in the northeastern town of Jedwabne began last week as part of a government investigation launched after a book described how Poles, not Nazi troops, killed as many as 1,600 Jews there.
Ordered by the state Institute of National Remembrance, the exhumation had been halted Thursday night after a rabbi from Israel had to leave. It resumed Monday after Rabbi Morris Herschaft of London arrived to oversee the work.
Witold Kulesza, head of the institute’s investigators in Jedwabne, said the exhumation was finished by late afternoon, and Mr. Herschaft said prayers over the grave.
The part of the grave that was uncovered “may hold about 200 victims,” Mr. Kulesza said. Ashes could correspond to the remains of 50 more victims, he said.
Mr. Kulesza stressed, however, that “only a complete exhumation could have answered how many victims there were.”
He said that “what we were able to do helped us reveal the mechanism of the crime.” Investigators plan to issue a statement on the findings later.
Despite fierce opposition from the Jewish community, the institute ordered the exhumation to secure evidence in case charges are brought against surviving perpetrators. Investigators also hoped to establish the identities of some of the victims.
The rabbis supervising the procedure were there to minimize the desecration and ensure the remains were treated with utmost respect. Jewish religious law forbids exhumations except in rare cases – to prevent worse desecration, for example, or to protect human life.
The Jedwabne massacre took place in July 1941 after invading Nazi troops supplanted the previous Soviet occupiers. Some historians have suggested the Poles acted out of revenge for what they saw as Jewish cooperation with repressive Soviet occupiers, who left the Lenin statue behind when they fled the invading Germans.
