By REUTERS
Filed at 5:09 p.m. ET

WARSAW (Reuters) - Polish prosecutors found the remains of roughly 200 victims of a 1941 massacre of Jews in a small town in eastern Poland during a contested exhumation that ended on Monday, officials said.

The figure was far less than the 1,600 Jews that Polish-born historian Jan Gross claimed were killed in his controversial book "Neighbors" published last year. [No wonder it was a "contested exhumation", Gross's lies are slowly uncovered. K.J.]

The exhumation, criticized by Jewish groups as desecrating the dead, was initiated by Poland's National Remembrance Institute (IPN), a state body probing war crimes, after the book blamed local Polish townsfolk in Jedwabne for conducting the massacre.

"We cannot say how many people were killed in Jedwabne or whether there are any other graves. We know how many human remains we found... We saw bones and ashes of roughly 200 people," IPN's top prosecutor Witold Kulesza told Reuters.

"We did not conduct a full exhumation since we did not pull out the bones from the graves," he said.

Kulesza said there were no immediate plans to search for more graves in the area.

German Nazis were in control of the area at the time of the massacre in July 1941. The blame for the mass killings had been laid at their feet until Gross published his book and ignited a furious national debate.

IPN requested the exhumation, which received a final go-ahead from Justice Minister Lech Kaczynski last month, to establish the number of victims and the circumstances of their death.

Kaczynski said earlier that the limited scope of exhumation was part of an agreement with the Jewish community.

[But Reuters reported doesn't say what the Justice Minister, Lech Kaczynski also said. Here are excerpts from his statement, as reported by PAP on the 05.06.01:

"In Jedwabne died far less than 1600 Jews, that Gross writes about in his book... It is impossible for those to graves to contain 1600 bodies, not even a number of bodies close to 1600. It is very obvious that there are not so many victims here..."

Further questioned in this regard by the reporters, Lech Kaczynski stated: "...there are more than one hundred (bodies). Approximately 200."

BURNT REMAINS

Gross's book alleges that Polish villagers went on a murderous rampage through Jedwabne, then herded the remaining Jews into a barn near the local Jewish cemetery and set it alight, killing nearly all of the town's 1,600 Jews.

"We have excavated two graves, one within the boundaries of a barn and one just outside of it. We found bones and human ashes, as well as keys, jewelry and other personal belongings," Kulesza said. [What Kulesza forgot to say, or reporter didn't quote, is that the location of the second grave doesn't correspond with the testimonies of Gross's witness' K.J.]

The exhumation, monitored by rabbis and guarded by police, was followed by some Polish Jews who prayed and recited psalms as workers and archaeologists removed layers of dirt.

Some historians and Jedwabne residents argue the killing was committed by Germans or by a small group of local Poles acting on the orders of the Nazis.

Kulesza said prosecutors found cartridges but further investigation was needed to determine whether they came from German army weapons or other types of guns.

[No, he didn't say "to determine whether they came from German army weapons". According to PAP he said that IPN is in the possession of nearly one hundred cartridges, bullets and rifle bridges, and is conducting examination of these items, what would help to establish which German units took part in the massacre, not "whether they came from German army weapons". Death penalty, never mind firearms, punished even possession of the radio receiver by any Polish national under the German occupation. The only people armed with firearms in Jedwabne could be the Germans. K.J.]

Local Jedwabne authorities plan to unveil a monument at the massacre site during a 60th anniversary ceremony on July 10, due to be attended by Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski.

Last week, Jewish groups criticized Polish authorities after their proposed text to be inscribed on the monument did not explicitly blame Poles for the killings, saying only that the massacre was ``inflamed by German Nazism.''

About three million Polish Jews were killed during World War Two, mainly in concentration camps. [Of course the author "conveniently forgot" about three million of the ethnic Poles that were also killed by the Germans during WWII. Forgotten Holocaust. K.J.]