Thieves steal infamous Auschwitz death camp sign

Thieves steal infamous Auschwitz death camp sign

WARSAW (AFP) - – Thieves on Friday stole the infamous Nazi German "Arbeit macht frei" sign from the entrance to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland, police said, an act that sparked widespread outrage.

The sign, which means "Work Will Set You Free" in German, has become a symbol of the horror of the camp where about 1.1 million mainly Jewish prisoners died during World War II, most in the notorious gas chambers.

Police said the theft may have been ordered by a private collector or a group of individuals.

"A worldwide symbol of the cynicism of Hitler's executioners and the martyrdom of their victims has been stolen. This act deserves the strongest possible condemnation," Polish President Lech Kaczynski said in a statement.

His Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres expressed "the deepest shock of Israel's citizens and the Jewish community across the world".

"The sign holds deep historical meaning for both Jews and non-Jews alike as a symbol of the more than one million lives that perished at Auschwitz," Peres was quoted as saying by his office.

Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum spokesman Jaroslaw Mensfelt told AFP that thieves carried out an expert operation to take the metal sign just before dawn on Friday.

"It's a profanation of the place where more than a million people were murdered. It's shameful," he said.

Camp survivors also decried the theft.

"In taking this historic symbol, the perpetrators wanted to destroy history and committed this perverse act in order to revive Nazism," said Raphael Esrail, 84, president of the Union of Auschwitz Deportees in France.

The five-metre (16-foot) long sign was forged by prisoners on the orders of the Nazis, who set up the camp after invading Poland in 1939. It was not hard to unhook from above the entrance gate "but you needed to know how," Mensfelt said.

A police dog team was tracking the thieves while detectives combed through 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, located on the outskirts of the southern town of Oswiecim, which was annexed and renamed by Germany during World War II. The site has been a Polish state-run museum and memorial since the war ended in 1945.

"All leads are being considered, but we are focusing on a theft ordered by a private collector or a group of individuals," Oswiecim police spokeswoman Malgorzata Jurecka told AFP.

Police offered a 5,000-zloty (1,200-euro/1,700-dollar) reward for information leading to the recovery of the sign or the arrest of the thieves.

Kaczynski urged the public to help. "It's our collective duty to return it to its rightful place from which it has been ripped by force," he said.

Meanwhile, museum staff placed a replica sign above the gate.

Nazi Germany initially created the camp for Polish resistance fighters in an army barracks in 1940.

Auschwitz was later expanded into a vast complex, after the Nazis razed the nearby village of Brzezinka -- Birkenau in German.

About 1.1 million people perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau -- one million of them Jews from Poland and the rest of Nazi-occupied Europe -- some from overwork, starvation and disease, but mostly in the gas chambers.

It was one of six death camps set up in Poland by the Germans, who murdered six million Jews during the war.

Some of the other death camps had the same sign, erected in a cynical ploy to maintain the illusion that they were labour camps.

Auschwitz-Birkenau's other victims included non-Jewish Poles, Soviet and other Allied prisoners of war, Roma and anti-Nazi resistance members from across Europe.

It was liberated by Soviet troops in January 1945.

The theft came a day after Germany donated 60 million euros (88 million dollars) to a global fund to preserve the site.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum said the money represented half the total it needs to ensure the site's future as a permanent memorial to Nazi victims. About 4-5 million euros are needed each year to maintain it.