Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

Wars never really end. There are the scars, both physical and psychological,

and there is the matter of blame. Who caused what? Who is to blame?

Earlier this year, Polish lawmakers advanced a bill that would make it a crime

to blame Poland for the Nazi death camps and other German atrocities committed within

the country during World War II. The bill sparked an outcry from historians in the Israeli

government that Poland was whitewashing history. And many critics used just one word as evidence.

Yedvobni. Here's what they mean.

In the summer of 1941, the small eastern village of Yedvobni was occupied, as was all of Poland, by a contingent of German

police. On a blistering July day, a group of Polish men from and around the town began

rounding up Jewish male residents. They forced the Jews, including the local rabbi, to pull down

the statue of Lenin that was left over from the Soviet occupation

of the region. Then, with the Germans looking on, the Jews were taken to a barn and clubbed and

stabbed to death by their fellow townsmen. The carnage, historians say, didn't end there. The raids

widened as the day wore on. More and more Jews of all ages were

packed in the barn. With a crowd of townspeople and German police looking on, the structure

was set on fire. Of those basic facts, there is little dispute. About everything else,

there has been a raging debate. The most serious controversy has centered on raw questions

of complicity versus compulsion.

Were the locals of Vietbá compelled to kill,

or were the instigators of a mass murder?

Poland was under brutal Nazi control at the time.

...