At the commemoration, Elie Wiesel said he did not believe in collective guilt. Before July 1946, there was still a chance that Jews in Poland could regain a nearly normal life. But Kielce's Poles went on a rampage and changed all that. Ultimately, some 100,000 Jews fled the country. Today, Poland's tiny Jewish community seems much more at ease with the Poles than do Jews from America or Israel.
Recriminations continue, however.
In February, the Polish government issued a formal apology for the Kielce pogrom. He claimed the pogrom might have been the work of Communist secret police. Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski publicly denounced Moskal's criticism. In Kielce, a sprawling provincial city that became an arms manufacturing center under communism, the local and national governments' penitent gestures draw a mixed response. All rights reserved.