POLISH PRESIDENT Lech Kaczynski has dubbed “insane” the thieves who stole the infamous “Arbeit Macht Frei” (work makes you free) sign over the entrance to the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz.
Between 3am and 5.30am yesterday, thieves unscrewed the three-metre-wide iron sign manufactured by camp prisoners in 1941. “It looks as though it had been a premeditated theft as someone had to enter the premises presumably dragging a ladder along and undo screws – not an easy task in severe weather conditions,” said investigating police officer Dariusz Nowak. He dismissed suggestions it was stolen for scrap and declined to comment on speculation that the sign was targeted by neo-Nazis.
“A trail picked up by the police dog show the sign was pulled through a hole in the camp’s wall and was later most likely loaded up on a vehicle,” he said.
At the camp near the Polish town of Oswiecim yesterday, curators mounted a 2006 replica of the sign in its place. They handed to police security footage of the gate, but expressed doubt that cameras would have captured any details of the night-time theft.
“This crime has been committed by a completely insane person. Auschwitz is priceless. This act merits strong condemnation,” said a spokesman for Mr Kaczynski yesterday.
The director of the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem called the theft “an attack on the memory of the Holocaust from elements that want to return us to darker days”.
At the climate conference in Copenhagen, Polish prime minister Donald Tusk held an emergency meeting with Israeli president Shimon Peres. Expressing “deep shock” at the theft, Mr Peres urged a speedy investigation to recover the sign.
The theft from the camp where over a million people were killed – mostly European Jews – drew condemnation from Auschwitz survivors. “The sign has to be found, this object is of historical value,” said survivor Noach Flug, now living in Jerusalem. “That slogan and the camp itself will tell what happened even when we won’t be able to tell anymore.”
The sign at the Auschwitz I camp is notable for the upside-down “B” in “Arbeit”. Historians suggest it was no slip but a camouflaged sign of disobedience against camp authorities and their hollow slogan. Yesterday’s theft is the most daring attack on the Auschwitz camp, under fire for years from Holocaust deniers who call it a postwar fake.