OSWIECIM, Poland – The Nazis' infamous iron sign declaring "Arbeit Macht Frei" — German for "Work Sets You Free" — was stolen Friday from the entrance of the former Auschwitz death camp, Polish police said.
The 5-meter-long (16-foot-long), 40-kilogram (90-pound) iron sign at the Holocaust memorial site in southern Poland was unscrewed on one side and torn off on the other, police spokeswoman Katarzyna Padlo said.
The theft from the entrance to the camp — where more than 1 million people, mostly Jews, died during World War II — brought condemnation worldwide.
"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," Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev said in a statement from Jerusalem.
"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."
The sign disappeared from the Auschwitz memorial between 3:30 a.m. and 5 a.m., Padlo said.
Police deployed 50 police, including 20 detectives, and a search dog to the Auschwitz grounds, where barracks, watchtowers and ruins of gas chambers stand as testament to the atrocities of Nazi Germany.
Police said they were reviewing footage from a surveillance camera that overlooks the entrance gate and the road beyond, but declined to say whether the crime was recorded.
Auschwitz museum spokesman Jaroslaw Mensfelt said it might have been too dark for the camera to have captured images.
He said the thieves apparently carried the sign 300 meters (yards) to an opening in a concrete wall. That opening had been left intentionally to preserve a poplar tree dating back to the time of the war.
Four metal bars that had blocked the opening were cut. Tire tracks and footprints in the snow led from the wall opening to the nearby road, where police presume the sign was loaded on to a vehicle.
Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, said he had trouble imagining who would steal the sign.
"If they are pranksters, they'd have to be sick pranksters, or someone with a political agenda. But whoever has done it has desecrated world memory," Schudrich said.
He said the theft could have been committed by neo-Nazi extremists, or even people scheming to sell the sign of the black market.
"There's a market for everything," he said, adding that it was "like stealing a Picasso. Even a hot Picasso you could try to move after 10 years — but not this."
An exact replica of the sign, produced when the original received restoration work years ago, was quickly hung in its place.
In Brussels, European Parliament president Jerzy Buzek, a former Polish prime minister, appealed to the thieves to return the sign.
"Give it back out of respect for the suffering of over a million victims, murdered in this Nazi camp, the biggest cemetery of humankind," Buzek said.
Polish President Lech Kaczynski said he was "shaken and outraged" by the theft of a "world-known symbol of Nazi cynicism and cruelty." He appealed to all Poles for help finding it.
Police were offering a 5,000-zloty ($1,700) reward for public tipoffs about the thieves.
In Jerusalem, the International Auschwitz Committee said the theft "deeply unsettles the survivors."
"The sign has to be found," said Noach Flug, an Auschwitz survivor and president of the committee. "The slogan and the camp itself will tell what happened even when we won't be able to tell anymore."
After occupying Poland in 1939, the Nazis established the Auschwitz I camp in the southern Polish city of Oswiecim and initially used it for German political prisoners and non-Jewish Polish prisoners, who began arriving in June 1940.
Nazi guards ordered Polish inmates to make the original sign shortly thereafter in the camp's iron workshop, museum spokesman Pawel Sawicki said.
Two years later, hundreds of thousands of Jews began arriving by cattle trains to the wooden barracks of nearby Birkenau, also called Auschwitz II, where most were killed in gas chambers.
The slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei" appeared at the entrances of other Nazi camps, including Dachau and Sachsenhausen. The long curving sign at Auschwitz is considered the best known.
Today the Auschwitz site attracts more than 1 million visitors annually.
This week Germany pledged euro60 million ($87 million) — half the estimated amount required — to a new endowment that will fund long-term preservation work.
This was the first major act of vandalism at the site, which previously has suffered graffiti including spray-painted swastikas.
Other Holocaust memorials have suffered neo-Nazi vandalism. Sachsenhausen on the outskirts of Berlin was attacked in 1992, when two barracks were set on fire. That crime remains unsolved.
_____
Scislowska reported from Warsaw. Associated Press Writers Vanessa Gera in Warsaw, David Rising and Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin, Raf Casert in Brussels, and Aron Heller in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
Poland: Auschwitz 'Arbeit Macht Frei' sign stolen - Yahoo! News
__________________
Friday, December 18, 2009
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Sergey Romanov and Nick Terry barred from access to www.deathcamps.org
www.DeathCamps.org
The Genuine ARC website
Barred indefinitely!
Sergey Romanov and Nick Terry
The ARC team has unanimously agreed to bar indefinitely, the following individuals: Sergey Romanov and Nick Terry
We will not publish the details surrounding their banning, yet suffice to say they are not welcome here at www.Deathcamps.org, nor at any of our associate organizations. Due to their activities they have also been barred from any access to the ARC libraries, photo archives, and all electronic resources maintained by the ARC team.
ARC maintains NO association or contact with these individuals, and while we appreciate the thousands of email reports we've received regarding their unsavory actions we must ask that you direct this information to the appropriate authorities.
Thank you -ARC
© ARC http://www.deathcamps.org September 30, 2002 - 2010
Domain Registration & Official Copyright Information can be validated at the WHOIS website. Beware of counterfeit ARC websites with hyphenated URL's. and avoid controversial hate blogs whenever possible.
|
For a broader study of the Holocaust please visit: http://www.HolocaustResearchProject.org
Monday, November 16, 2009
ARC publishes list of Revision sites and Holocaust Controversy Hate Blogs..
The Genuine ARC website www.DeathCamps.org ARC list of banned denial sites and hate blogs: (Sampling of some of the worst filth on the net)
These sites have been identified as Holocaust Denial or Controversy sites that offer no value other than to promote hatred, bigotry, lies, and pseudo debate. It is definitely worth while visiting one of these hate blogs to gain an understanding of how these controversialists operate. -ARC www.DeathCamps.org © ARC | <><><><><><><><>
Monday, November 2, 2009
Wayback Machine Archive blocks access to fraudulent version of the Genuine ARC website!
| Wayback Machine Internet Archive Web Archive bans access to the counterfeit version of the genuine ARC website. The Counterfeit URL is spelled [death-camps] ← note the hyphen Wayback Machine is the latest of the major search engines to block access and remove from its index all references to this fraudulent and illegal counterfeit copy of www.deathcamps.org
The genuine ARC team thanks to the WebArchive for its support!
© ARC http://www.deathcamps.org September 30, 2002 - 2009
Domain Registration & Official Copyright Information can be validated at the WHOIS website. Beware of counterfeit ARC websites with hyphenated URL's.
|
For a broader study of the Holocaust please visit: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
The Genuine ARC team refutes controversial Internet Blogs and Forums!
The Genuine ARC Team and our website http://www.deathcamps.org/ has no association with Holocaust "Debunkers" and those wishing to create controversy by debating Revisionists and other Internet Kooks on silly blogs, rediculous forums and websites of low moral standing.
Read more here: http://deathcamps.org/kooks.html
Read more here: http://deathcamps.org/kooks.html
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Bing.com boots the bogus version of deathcamps.org
Bing.com the new premeir search and "decision engine" from Microsoft.
Bing joins the long list of search providers who have banned and blocked access to the illegal and counterfeit version of the genuine ARC website.
The counterfeit version has a hyphenated URL and is supported by Hate-Bloggers, and fraudsters.
Read more here: Bing gives bogus site the boot!
The genuine ARC website www.DeathCamps.org
Bing joins the long list of search providers who have banned and blocked access to the illegal and counterfeit version of the genuine ARC website.
The counterfeit version has a hyphenated URL and is supported by Hate-Bloggers, and fraudsters.
Read more here: Bing gives bogus site the boot!
The genuine ARC website www.DeathCamps.org
Thursday, May 7, 2009
The Genuine DeathCamps.org website honored by Holocaust Survivors!
Action Reinhard Camps founder Chris Webb, along with the staff and members of the genuine ARC team were honored this week at a Holocaust Remembrance gathering in Washington D.C
Mr. Webb was praised for his long standing research work spanning three decades and his commitment to Holocaust Education both via his work on the ARC website, and his involvement with the Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team [www.HolocaustResearchProject.org], as well as for his many books, and lectures at Universities throughout Europe and the USA.
We would also like to extend our congratulations to Mr. Webb and his fantastic team of researchers and webmaster.
Well done Chris!
Mr. Webb was praised for his long standing research work spanning three decades and his commitment to Holocaust Education both via his work on the ARC website, and his involvement with the Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team [www.HolocaustResearchProject.org], as well as for his many books, and lectures at Universities throughout Europe and the USA.
We would also like to extend our congratulations to Mr. Webb and his fantastic team of researchers and webmaster.
Well done Chris!
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
2009 Reunion of the Genuine ARC founding members!
Reunion of Genuine ARC Members
March 2009 London
The Trustees of the Genuine Action Reinhard Camps Website would like to thank those former members of the original ARC group and its founding member Mr. Chris Webb, for the wonderful reunion in London this past month.
Despite the fact that the Trustees have archived the http://www.deathcamps.org/ website for posterity, we were delighted to see the positive impact the ARC team has had on so many people worldwide.
We especially want to thank the German Hauptschule students from Hamburg, Bremen, Aachen and Cologne for their wonder support and interest, we look forward to future collaboration with you all on new endeavors.
For information on the on the ARC archive site visit this link: ARC Archived
© ARC http://www.deathcamps.org September 30, 2002 - 2009
Official Copyright Information on record with US Office of copyright in Washington DC. Official Domain Registration
[Beware of counterfeit ARC websites with hyphenated URL's.]
Copyright 2009 ARC www.Deathcamps.org
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)