11 July , 2006
Poland's Education minister Roman Giertych, who has been strongly criticized by Israel for leading an anti-Semitic party, laid flowers on Monday at the site of the Jedwabne massacre of Jews during the Second World War, and said he offered "an outstretched hand" to Israel. Giertych, the head of the right-wing League of Polish Families, placed flowers at the foot of the monument to hundreds of Jews murdered by their neighbors in Jedwabne, in northeastern Poland. "There is and will be no place for anti-Semitism in Poland," Giertych said during a ceremony marking the 65th anniversary of the killings. The controversial minister acknowledged that the event's history was "difficult" but said "it demands reconciliation in the spirit of love and mercy." On July 10, 1941, villagers rounded up as many as 1,600 Jews and burned them alive in a barn on the edge of Jedwabne after the Nazis seized territory in northwestern Poland formerly occupied by the Soviet Union. Israel's ambassador, David Peleg, thanked the Polish government for taking care of the monument. A day earlier, Israeli officials announced they were refusing all contact with Giertych because he is the leader of a right-wing party considered by many as anti-Semitic, a policy that could hinder cooperation in the area of Holocaust education.
On Monday, Peleg said Giertych's trip to Jedwabne would not change Israel's stance toward the minister or the League of Polish Families. "Our problem was never with Roman Giertych personally, but with his party, which has an anti-Semitic policy," Peleg told the "Associated Press" news agency. Israel and Poland's small Jewish community oppose the League because it is historically rooted in a prewar party, National Democracy, that led successful efforts to limit the numbers of Jews at Polish universities and segregate them from Christians. They are also concerned over the party's links with a far-right youth wing, the All-Polish Youth, whose members have in the past used Nazi gestures.
