The Israeli Ambassador to Poland, Yacov Livne, reminded that today is the anniversary of the massacre committed on July 10, 1941, in Jedwabne. However, he engaged in manipulation. He used a photo of a German extermination camp as an illustration for his post. Simultaneously, he did not write “Germans” – he stated that Poland was occupied by… Nazis!
🕯️ #OTD 10 July 1941, in Nazi occupied Poland, at the #Jedwabne Pogrom hundreds of Jewish men, women & children were forced into a barn and burned alive by their neighbors. #Holocaust #WeRemember pic.twitter.com/N4bBmTjsEd
— Amb. Yacov Livne 🇮🇱 (@YacovLivne) July 10, 2024
Livne illustrated the post with a graphic featuring a photo from Konzentrationslager Bergen-Belsen – a German concentration camp that existed from 1940 to 1945 in the Third Reich near the town of Bergen. About 50,000 concentration camp prisoners and about 20,000 prisoners of war, including Poles, died in KZ Bergen-Belsen.
After the publication of this post, outrage ensued. The Israeli ambassador is accused of deliberate manipulation. The photo, which includes British soldiers who burned the Bergen camp in 1945 after its liberation, was equated with Jedwabne. Recipients perceive a deliberate attempt to target Poles with the illustration.
“Disgusting manipulation. This isn’t even a photo from Jedwabne. You insult the memory of the victims,” reads one of the comments. “Liar” appears repeatedly in other posts.
Let’s recall that this is not the first scandal caused by Livne. He once wrote about “gas chambers in Poland,” which met with a strong reaction from politicians, some even demanding his expulsion.