Neo-Nazis not behind theft of Auschwitz sign: police

Polish police said early Monday they have recovered the Nazi German "Arbeit macht frei" sign stolen from the site of the Auschwitz death camp in southern Poland and arrested the alleged thieves.

"We have arrested five men aged from 20 to 39 in the north of Poland. The recovered sign has been cut up into three pieces," Dariusz Nowak, spokesman for the police in southern Krakow, told AFP.

The suspects have no links to neo-Nazi groups, Polish police said on Monday.

"They were picked up shortly before midnight and the sign was found in a house," he added without giving further details.

The infamous metal sign five metres (16 feet) long which hung over the entrance to the Auschwitz death camp, now a museum, was stolen at dawn on Friday sparking a chorus of outrage from world leaders, Jewish groups and Holocaust survivors.

Learning of the sign's recovery, Pawel Sawicki, a spokesman for Auschwitz museum, told AFP: "It's an enormous relief. We are extremely grateful to the police who have done fantastic work."

He added: "This symbol, probably one of the most important of the past century, can be put back in its place.

"We're very impatient to see what condition the sign is in. We have been told it's been cut up into pieces. Our curators will get it restored so that it can be put up again as quickly as possible."

Auschwitz museum is preparing to celebrate the 65th anniversary of Auschwitz-Birkenau's liberation by the Red Army on January 27.

The sign, which means "Work Will Set You Free", came to symbolise the horror of the camp in Nazi occupied Poland where 1.1 million mainly Jewish prisoners died during World War II, from overwork and starvation but mostly in the gas chambers. More

The Horrors of Auschwitz :

Up to 16 camp orchestras with every conceivable instrument available -

A camp theater where live plays could be performed by camp inmate actors

A camp cinema -

where every week different, mainly cultural and non-political films were shown -

The camp brothel

A camp library where inmates could borrow books from Forty -five thousand volumes available

Camp religious facilities made available on a rotating basis to every denomination for religious services

Swimming pool

Camp soccer field

a Sauna

Auschwitz art show

Auschwitz maternity ward - Over 3,000 live births were registered there, with not a single infant death while Auschwitz was in operation under German rule

Women's sections of camps had female guards

The Camp had a Jail too

Auschwitz jail - Since the camp was a large, open facility, transgressors could be arrested, tried and jailed right in Auschwitz. Jail




Dental facilities





Red Cross Visits were routine



No such visits took place - ever! - to Jewish Soviet Gulag camps.

Red Cross Report