In May – June 2001 IPN conducted a partial exhumation at the site of the barn where the largest group of Jewish victims perished . The scope of the exhumation was strictly limited by religious objections against disturbing the remains of the dead , embodied in Jewish religious doctrine . Gross criticized the decision to restrict the scope of the exhumation . Rabbi Joseph Polak also took issue with the decision , asserting that Jewish law required the bodies to be reinterred in a proper burial ground . Based on a similar exhumation at Katyn , where Stalin 's forces murdered 22,000 Polish prisoners of war in 1940 , the IPN 's forensic examiner estimated that the burial site in Jedwabne contained the remains of between 300 and 400 victims . There were charred bodies in two mass graves , and also broken pieces of the bust of Lenin ( previously assumed to have been buried at a Jewish cemetery )
Katyn
Katyn massacre
Jedwabne pogrom