Poland's Jewish community reluctantly accepted the government's decision to exhume the bodies in the northeastern town of Jedwabne as part of an inquiry that also will examine whether anyone should be charged in the murders.
Jewish law allows exhumation only in very rare, extreme cases and under strict conditions.
Rabbi Michael Schudrich said by telephone from the site. Schudrich suggested the actual exhumations will not begin until Wednesday, after the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, which ends Tuesday. The remains will be put back in the mass grave after investigators have examined them at the site, Schudrich said. The massacre was long remembered with a memorial that falsely blamed the Nazis for killing some 1,600 Jews in the village. A book published last year disclosed that the slayings were carried out by their Polish neighbors.