Warsaw - Poland's Justice Minister said yesterday he was deferring the exhumation of the remains of up to 1,600 Jewish victims of a 1941 massacre until he could confer with Jewish religious leaders.
Jewish groups had voiced their opposition, saying disturbing the dead violated their religious beliefs. The investigation into the massacre, in Podlasie province, was launched last year after a book by Polish emigre professor Jan Gross suggested the Jews had been murdered by their Polish neighbours, not by the Germans as previously believed.