FIVE MEN suspected of stealing the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign from the entrance to the former Nazi death camp at Auschwitz were not far-right sympathisers but “ordinary criminals”, Polish police said yesterday.
Officers are trying to establish how the sign – which, translated literally, means “work makes you free”, and has come to symbolise Nazi atrocities – was stolen despite the camp having security guards and CCTV cameras.
The metal lettering was found yesterday near one of the suspects’ homes in the Torun area of northern Poland, hundreds of miles from Auschwitz.
Police who arrested the five suspects in two Polish towns last night said the sign had been broken into three pieces, each containing one word.
They had launched an intensive search for the sign after it was taken during the early hours of Friday.
Although little information has so far surfaced about the motives for the theft, investigators said it appeared to have been carried out with criminal rather than ideological intent.
All the men, aged between 20 and 39, have criminal records for theft or violence, and four are unemployed. “From the information we have, none of the five belong to a neo-Nazi group nor hold such ideas,” said Andrzej Rokita, police commander for the southern Kraków region.
He refused to be drawn on reports in the Polish press that an unnamed “crazed” collector of Nazi memorabilia could have been behind the crime.
“Robbery and material gain are considered one of the main possible motives, but whether that was done on someone’s order will be determined in the process of the investigation,” the deputy investigator, Marek Wozniczka, said.
He said the suspects would probably be charged with the theft of a culturally valuable object, a crime that could result in a 10-year sentence if they were found guilty.
Police found the dismantled lettering in the backyard of a shop belonging to one of the men.
The theft provoked worldwide outrage.
More than a million people died in Auschwitz during the second World War. – (Guardian service)