JERSEY CITY — The Exchange Place monument to the victims of a 1940 Polish massacre is "100% being moved" three blocks west from its longtime home, Mayor Steve Fulop said on social media Saturday morning.

Fulop's tweet, which came five days after plans to relocate the statue ignited a firestorm, is the first time he has committed to moving the statue entirely. The city has previously said only that it would "return the statue to the public" following planned renovations to the Exchange Place plaza.

Jersey City and Polish officials have spent the past week exchanging barbs over the 34-foot tall Katyn memorial, which was unveiled at Exchange Place in 1991. The chair of the Exchange Place business group that is paying for the planned plaza renovation has said he wants the statue relocated. Polish officials have argued the statue is "universally" significant and should not be moved.

Fulop's tweet was a response to an Associated Press article about the statue controversy.

"2 be clear 1) the statue is 100% being MOVED to the place it was supposed to be per 1986 ordinance 2) senior ppl of the polish govt reached out + I won't meet w/ppl that try to rewrite history on their country's role in a Holocaust 3) the only ppl I answer to is Jersey City -done," Fulop wrote.

In 1986, when the City Council accepted the statue as a gift, it approved an ordinance saying it would be placed at 75 Montgomery St., near the post office. The head of the statue committee told The Jersey Journal last week that the original location was changed because the statue would not fit there.

Downtown Councilman James Solomon said he was surprised by Fulop's tweet and said the decision should not be made "behind closed doors." Solomon has not said whether he supports moving the statue or leaving it where it stands.

"I think it's very important the community has an input in the process," he said Sunday.

The mayor's social media accounts have been inundated with negative feedback from the Polish community here and abroad. A Saturday morning tweet about his home garden received dozens of responses about Katyn, at least two of which mention Adolf Hitler. The comments on his Sunday Facebook post about participating in a Sunday race to benefit breast cancer research are almost all about the Katyn statue.

The monument depicts a bound-and-gagged soldier stabbed in the back. It commemorates the Katyn massacre, when more than 20,000 Polish soldiers and others were murdered by the Soviet Union after it invaded Poland.

Mack-Cali CEO Mike DeMarco, who chairs the Exchange Place Special Improvement District, has called the statue "gruesome."

A protest by supporters of keeping the monument at Exchange Place is scheduled for Sunday, May 13 at 3 p.m. at the statue.

Jersey Journal staff writer Terrence T. McDonald contributed to this report.

Caitlin Mota may be reached at cmota@jjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @caitlin_mota. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.