Thieves on Friday stole theinfamous Nazi German “Arbeitmacht frei” sign from the entrance tothe Auschwitz death camp in Poland,police said, an act that sparkedwidespread outrage.
The sign, which means “WorkWill Set You Free” in German, hasbecome a symbol of the horror of thecamp where about 1.1 million mainlyJewish prisoners died during WorldWar II, most in the notorious gaschambers.
Police said the theft may have been ordered by a private collector or agroup of individuals.
“A wo r l dwi d e s ymb o l o f t h e c y n i c i sm o f Hi t l e r ’ sexecutioners and the martyrdom of their victims has been stolen. Thisact deserves the strongest possible condemnation,” Polish President LechKaczynski said in a statement.
His Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres expressed “the deepest shock ofIsrael’s citizens and the Jewish community across the world”. “The sign holds deephistorical meaning for bothJews and non-Jews alikeas a symbol of the morethan one million lives thatperished at Auschwitz,”
Peres was quoted as sayingby his office.
Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum spokesman Jaroslaw Mensfelt told AFPthat thieves carried out an expert operation to take the metal sign just beforedawn on Friday.
“It’s a profanation of the place where more than a million people weremurdered. It’s shameful,” he said.
Camp survivors also decried the theft.
“In taking this historic symbol, the perpetrators wanted to destroyhistory and committed this perverse act in order to revive Nazism,” saidRaphael Esrail, 84, president of the Union of Auschwitz Deportees inFrance.
The five-metre (16-foot) long sign was forged by prisoners on theorders of the Nazis, who set up the camp after invading Poland in 1939. Itwas not hard to unhook from above the entrance gate “but you needed toknow how,” Mensfelt said.
A police dog team was tracking the thieves while detectives combedthrough video surveillance footage from the site and neighbouring areas,and other officers set up roadblocks. Mensfelt said it was the first serious case of theft at Auschwitz, locatedon the outskirts of the southern town of Oswiecim, which was annexed andrenamed by Germany during World War II. The site has been a Polish staterunmuseum and memorial since the war ended in 1945.
“All leads are being considered, but we are focusing on a theftordered by a private collector or a group of individuals,” Oswiecim policespokeswoman Malgorzata Jurecka told AFP.
Police offered a 5,000-zloty (1,200-euro/1,700-dollar) reward forinformation leading to the recovery of the sign or the arrest of the thieves.
