Auschwitz ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ sign stolen

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — The infamous iron sign bearing the Nazis’ cynical slogan “Arbeit Macht Frei” that spanned the main entrance to the former Auschwitz death camp was stolen before dawn Friday, Polish police said.

The heavy 5-meter-long (16-foot-long), 40-kilogram (90-pound) iron sign at the former Nazi death camp in southern Poland where more than 1 million people died during World War II was unscrewed on one side and torn off on the other, police spokeswoman Katarzyna Padlo said.

The theft of the sign bearing the German words for “Work Sets You Free” brought immediate condemnation from Jewish leaders in Poland and internationally.

“The theft of such a symbolic object is an attack on the memory of the Holocaust, and an escalation from those elements that would like to return us to darker days,” Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev said in a statement from Jerusalem.

“I call on all enlightened forces in the world who fight against anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia and the hatred of the other, to join together to combat these trends.”

The sign disappeared from the Auschwitz memorial between 3:30 a.m. and 5 a.m., Padlo said. The thieves appear to have known the area well, she added.

Police have launched an intensive hunt, with some two dozen criminal investigators and a search dog sent to the grounds of the vast former death camp, whose barracks, watchtowers and ruins of gas chambers still stand as testament to the atrocities inflicted by Nazi Germany on Jews, Gypsies, and others.

The thieves likely used a ladder to remove the sign from the 5-meter (16-foot) high posts on which it sat, Auschwitz museum spokesman, Jaroslaw Mensfelt, said.

It then appears to have been carried some 300 meters (300 yards) to an opening in a concrete wall around the site that had been secured with barbed wire, he said.

Neither Padlo nor Mensfelt would comment on whether there was surveillance footage of the theft, citing the ongoing investigation.

Padlo said the dog led police to a site outside the memorial wall where the sign appeared to have been set down, leaving an imprint in the fresh snow, and to another site by the road, where it appears to have been loaded on to a vehicle.

An exact replica of the sign — made by the museum after World War II — was immediately hung in place of the missing original to fill in the empty space, but all visitors were being informed about the theft, another museum spokesman, Pawel Sawicki, said. The museum had the replica made to hang when restoration work has been required on the original, Sawicki said.

Sawicki called the theft a “desecration” and said it was shocking that the tragic history of the site did not stop the thieves.

“We believe that the perpetrators will be found soon and the inscription will be returned to its place,” Sawicki told The Associated Press.

Padlo said there are currently no suspects but police are pursuing several theories. A 5,000-zloty ($1,700) reward has been offered to anyone who can help track down the thieves.

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