Infamous Auschwitz sign is convineintly stolen

How convinient.  Just when Iran’s Hitler and the ME denounce that the Holocaust ever occured, the evidence of it occuring is disappearing.

 

The infamous wrought iron Arbeit Macht Frei sign atop the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland has been stolen.

The BBC, along with other media, reports that the sign was unscrewed and removed overnight.

A cut barbed wire fence through which the inscription

CAPTION

AP

 

Polish authorities have denounced the theft  while Israel’s Holocaust museum director said he suspects that neo-Nazis are behind it.

More than a million people – 90% of them Jews – were murdered by the Nazis at the death camp during World War II.

During the Holocaust, hundreds of thousands of prisoners passed under the sign, whose words mean “Work Sets You Free.”

Jarek Mensfelt from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum said staff were in shock over the theft.

Mensfelt said it had to be the work of someone familiar with the closed-circuit camera system and who knew the schedules of security patrols. He called it an “organized action,” the BBC says.

Update at 7:53 a.m. ET:  The thieves apparently escaped by cutting their way through a portion of the barbed wire fence surrounding the camp.

Polish Senate Speaker Bogdan Borusewicz told Polish radio that the incident was “deplorable and embarrassing,” Deutsche Welle, German radio, reports.

“I hope the police recover the sign soon and that it won’t have been cut into pieces,” Borusewicz said.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2009/12/infamous-auschwitz-sign-is-stolen-/1

The theft occurred one day after Germany announced it would contribute $87 million to the new Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, which earlier this year launched a campaign to raise $172 million to preserve the remains of the death camp as a memorial and museum. There are about 450 buildings and remains of buildings at the site, including the ruins of gas chambers. There also are 80,000 pairs of shoes of victims and 3,800 suitcases, according to a report in the Deutsche Welle.

http://jta.org/news/article/2009/12/18/1009801/arbeit-macht-frei-sign-stolen-from-auschwitz