POLAND: Thousands of Polish Jews were murdered by their friends and neighbours during the second World War and not by occupying Nazi forces, a new investigation has found.
The investigation discovered that an estimated 2,000 Polish Jews died in a brutal killing spree in north-east Poland in 1941, rewriting one of the darkest chapters in its wartime history.
The Polish government initiated the investigation two years ago after a book claimed that 1,600 Jews were burnt alive by their neighbours in the village of Jedwabne in north-east Poland.
The new report, prepared by the Institute for National Remembrance, undermines the Polish belief that their ancestors were victims rather than perpetrators of wartime atrocities.
"The killers from Jedwabne . . . and other places were guilty of treason against their own country. They played into the Nazi's hands," wrote Mr Leon Kieres, director of the institute, in the foreword to the report.
Nazi forces stirred up anti-Semitic feelings among locals, the report says, but it was ultimately Poles themselves who were behind the series of attacks.
Investigators uncovered documents in the state prosecutor's office showing that around 100 Poles were accused of participating in the 1941 massacres. Some 17 people were found guilty of the charges and given prison sentences; one was executed.
"This report brings to light information that was so far buried in the archives and puts the facts in a broad perspective, reflecting all the complexity of the events," said Mr Pawel Machcewicz, editor of the report.
"The facts were not known at the national scale because there was no free press in Poland then and no newspapers wrote about them."
The investigators balance the common assumption that Polish authorities tried to cover up the massacres with the suggestion that the issue was overshadowed at the time by many high-profile Nazi trials.
Jewish activists in Poland have welcomed the publication of the 1,500-page report, "Around Jedwabne", as proof that Poland is facing up to crimes carried out by its citizens during the Nazi occupation.
The investigation found evidence of over 20 massacres in north-east Poland in addition to the one in Jedwabne.
The truth about that massacre first came to light two years ago with the publication of the book, The Neighbours, by Mr Jan Gross, a Polish historian based in New York.
The book told how villagers rounded up 1,600 of their Jewish neighbours in July 1941, herded them into a barn, and burned them alive.
The book prompted soul-searching in Poland and the government ordered the investigation.
In March 2001, authorities in Jedwabne removed a decades-old monument blaming "Nazi and Gestapo soldiers" for the massacre. Over 3,000 people, including survivors, came together in Jedwabne four months later on the 60th anniversary to remember the dead.
Mr Aleksander Kwasniewski, the Polish president, begged forgiveness at the remembrance ceremony for what he called "a particularly cruel crime, justified by nothing".
The Nazis murdered three million Polish Jews; Poland's Jewish community today numbers around 20,000.