In a video released on Thursday, Tom Rose argued that any understanding of the massacre had to reckon with what he called the "demonic world the Nazis created in occupied Poland," where helping Jews was "a capital crime."
"The Nazis tried to make the entire Polish nation complicit in the murder of the Jews by making betrayal the safest path to survival," he said.
Despite this, he added, "very few Poles betrayed their Jewish neighbours," while "thousands of Poles died trying to help them."
"Jedwabne was the exception, not the rule, in occupied Poland, because most Poles were decent, God-fearing people who refused to abandon the moral commandments that distinguish right from wrong," Rose said.
Poland's Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski thanked Rose for his remarks.
"Our duty to the victims of the past is to make sure atrocities never happen again," he wrote on X.
On July 10, 1941, several hundred Jews were killed in Jedwabne, most of them burned alive after being locked inside a barn that was set on fire.
A landmark inquiry by Poland's Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), concluded more than two decades ago, found that the killings were carried out by local Poles at Germany's instigation.
The IPN put the death toll at 340, though other historians give higher estimates.
Similar attacks on Jewish communities took place in more than 20 other towns in the region around the same time.
(ał)
Source: PAP
Click on the audio player above to listen to a report by Piotr Urbaniak.