Israel Matzav

'Arbet macht frei' sign stolen from Auschwitz: Next stop Tehran?

The well-known arbet macht frei (work makes you free) sign has been stolen from the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.

Police spokeswoman Katarzyna Padlo said police believe it was stolen between 3:30 a.m. and 5 a.m. Friday morning, when museum guards noticed that it was missing and alerted police.

Padlo also said that the iron sign, which spanned a gate at the main entrance to the former Nazi death camp in southern Poland, was removed by being unscrewed on one side and pulled off on the other.

Police have launched an intensive search. According to Padlo, there are currently no suspects but police are pursuing several theories.

The museum curator at Auschwitz said that they have a replacement sign, which they immediately put up.

As you might imagine, a lot of people here are quite upset about this.

Noah Flug chairman of The Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel and president of the International Auschwitz Committee called on the Polish police and government to "make every concerted effort to track down the perpetrators and bring them to justice."

Flug said that the sign is "an item of both important symbolic and historical value."

Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev said he was "shocked" to learn of the theft of the sign, "which has come to symbolize the murder of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust. "

"While we don't yet know exactly who stole the sign, 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," he said in a statement. "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."

Also speaking to Israel Radio, Tel Aviv-Yaffo Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, a Holocaust survivor and chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, called the theft "frightening and painful." He said the sign was the one of the firmest proofs of the Holocaust, and was a huge contribution to the perpetuation of the victims' memory.

The thieves were not caught on security cameras.

Here's betting it shows up in Tehran.

Read the whole thing.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:30 PM