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What Happened in Auschwitz?
Anna Spysz | 1st January 2010

This article has been read 5321 times


The story behind the theft and recovery of the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign

It was a cruelly ironic sign, "Arbeit Macht Frei" ("Work makes [you] free"), that greeted prisoners destined for the death camps at Auschwitz. Erected by the camp's prisoners in 1940, the sign had hung at the entrance to the premises for almost 70 years - until it was stolen in the middle of the night on 18 December.

At 5 am that morning, an Auschwitz Museum security guard called the Małopolska police to report the theft. A short-lived frenzy followed, as international media outlets turned their attention to the infamous Nazi death camp, while local police frantically searched for traces of the sign. Three days later, the sign was unearthed by the police in northern Poland, crudely cut into three pieces and missing an "I". Thanks to a tip-off to the police, five Polish men, aged 20 to 39, were arrested, but the crime had yet to be solved.

So what happened in Auschwitz? In an attempt to answer this question, Małopolska police brought three of the suspects who had confessed back to the scene of the crime on 22 December to re-enact the theft. They showed investigators how they unscrewed one end of the sign and tore the other end off, and then dragged the five-metre, 30-kilogram metal landmark to their vehicle. Unable to fit the sign in its entirety in their car, the suspects proceeded to cut it into three pieces, still at the camp, losing the "I" from "Frei" in the process, which was later recovered at the scene.

Meanwhile, more evidence began to surface that the five men involved in the theft were simply hired hands performing a job. They have been profiled as common criminals, all possessing police records of theft or assault, and their motives are financial rather than political. Judging from their actions, they were amateurs as well: after failing to bring the right tools to remove the sign initially, they had to leave the camp and visit a local hardware shop in neighbouring Oświęcim. They also failed to bring a vehicle long enough to carry the sign in its entirety. Police confirmed the media's speculations: "The main person behind this crime was somebody living outside Poland who does not hold Polish citizenship," prosecutor Artur Wrona stated at a press conference held that day.

Two days later, allegations that a Swedish neo-Nazi gang had commissioned the theft began to surface in the Swedish press. An unnamed source told Swedish daily Aftonbladet, "We had a person who was ready to pay millions for the sign". The source stated that the money was meant to be used to fund an attack on the home of Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and on the Swedish Foreign Ministry. Additional attacks on Parliament members were also mentioned.

According to Aftonbladet, the source also stated: "The sign was to be delivered to Sweden, since it was here the deal should be made. My role was to find a buyer. We had a person who was willing to pay millions but he had no political agenda. These things have a huge collector value... The biggest collectors are from England, the United States and France." The Polish men were to be paid about $17,000 for their role. Two of the five men were arrested in Gdynia, at a port where ferries to Sweden depart.

On 30 December, Inspector Dariusz Nowak of the Małopolska police department told the Krakow Post that with the recovery of the sign, the police have now done all they can and the matter is in the hands of the prosecutor's office. At the time of print, the Polish prosecutor had requested the help of Swedish authorities in the investigation.

The theft has also pointed out huge shortcomings in the museum's security. Małopolska police prosecutor Artur Wrona accused the Auschwitz Museum authorities of negligence: "Our investigation showed the thieves returned to the scene several times during the night. The first time they didn't have proper tools with them to unscrew it. The security was not working properly." Despite four of the museum's security guards being on duty during the theft, the thieves escaped unhindered and were not caught on the camp's surveillance.

The Cultural Ministry responded quickly to the allegations, and Culture Minister Bogdan Zdrojewski stated late on the 23rd that the Polish government will contribute 400,000 złoty towards the camp's security. The museum guards that were on duty have been suspended and other museum employees may also face consequences.

The men behind the sign's theft face 10 years in prison for their actions. They are being held in Krakow.

Museum officials have stated that they hope to restore the sign and return it to its rightful place by 27 January, to mark the 65th anniversary of the camp's liberation by the Allied Forces. At the moment, a replica of the sign hangs in its place.

See also: Stolen Auschwitz Sign Found (video update)

Photo: The sign before the theft / photo Jochen Zimmermann

Craggan 1st January 2010

"get one thing straight: Russia is not a Neo-Soviet threa nor was the Soviet Union the Greater Russian Empire writ large."

ROTFL.

I suggest you watch some Poland, Russia or Georgia related youtube videos by "George Friedman" or "Stratfor". That will give you things to fume about for days and days to come.

1st January 2010

It is good the Auschwitz sign has been found. Yet on the 19th December there was no mention of the state driven vandalism of the Soviet War memorial in Kutaisi in Georgia.

Perhaps the double standard here reflects the fact that Russian lives lost in the struggle against Nazism are just not deemed as important as Poles and Jews,even though Russiand were killed at Auschwitz too.

As well as the political fact that Georgia is an ally of Israel and Saakshvili has tended to have been supported by the Polish government because of the BTC pipeline, the geopolitical Great Game with Russia.

As well as the mendacious propaganda reversing the truth of the conflict in August 2008 when Saakshvili's regime attacked Russia and Russia responded and was then branded "an aggressor".

Naturally, as this is the Krakow Post it's normal and natural that the theft of the sign from a UNESCO World Heritage Site near Krakow is news.But the Krakow Post does host articles on the Missile Shield.

So Saakshvili's actions are relevant here. Yet not one leading Western newspaper has even mentioned the demolition of the Glory Monument in Kutaisi. Radio Free Liberty has, though

One tasteless article was called "Picking Up the Pieces'as if the demolition which actually killed a mother a child of eight was a bit of a black farce.Words like "tragedy" were used. Never vandalism.

The verbal consipation and the same standards of silence that have greeted the desecration of a Soviet War Memorial would not be applied to the vandalism of monuments commemorating the Jewish dead and quite rightly so.

The equivalent of what Saakashvili has done would be to imagine Lech Kaczynski ordering the monuments to the Soviet army in Krakow's Rakowice Cementary to be ripped out to make space for a rose garden.

How would Poles feel is Putin flattened the Katyn Massacre Monuments near Smolensk in order to build a new swimming pool or something else. Polish Russophobia and anti-Russian racism plays a role in preventing any empathy here.

Yet it must be remembered that the Glory Monument commemorated not just the joint battle against Nazi Germany by the Soviet Union which did liberate Auschwitz but 300,000 dead Georgia soldiers.

The double standards of leading Polish politicians are astounding. Those like Kaczynski denounce what happened at Auschwitz when a sign, albeit an iconic one is stolen.They say nothing when an entire commemorative site is eradicated.

They say nothing about Saakashvili's deliberate state driven nationalist iconoclasm, co-inciding with his birthday, whilst Stalin's statue retains pride of place in Gori.

This monument in Kutaisi was one to the Soviet soldiers who died. Not to the "Great Leader" Stalin. It would be a humane and civilised gesture if people in Poland condemned his action.

Unfortunately,the kind of doltish kneejerk hatred of Russia, understandable because of the history but still sometimes spilling over into ethnocentric racism, stop it happening.

People in Krakow and Poland, Polish and ex-patriate Americand and British should get one thing straight: Russia is not a Neo-Soviet threa nor was the Soviet Union the Greater Russian Empire writ large.

That's the creed of those like Zbigniew Brzezinski,a figure who gets a lot of attention in the Krakow Post because he is a Poles of aristocratic origin who promotes "democratic geopolitics" and gave the USSR it's Vietnam.

Brzezinski also helped create Al Qaida by organising the funding and training of the mujahadeen prior to the Soviet invasion of 1979 which is why Polish troops now are there, apart from being part of a surge od US power into Eurasia.

Most of which is designed in Afghanistan's case to ensure the TAPI pipeline gets built this year and to leave when the Afghans have been trained to protect the pipeline from insurgents wanting to blow it up.

Both the alliance with Georgia and Polish involvement and enthusiasm for Afghanistan is about energy diversification and pursuing geostrategies designed to bring that about and justified by anti-Russian "public diplomacy" by politicians.

None of this is considered worthy of being mainstream news. It is routinely supressed. The Krakow Post article on Brzezinski did not challenge the wisdom of Brzezinski's strategy at all.

Nor did the Krakow Post's promotion of Vaughan's biography draw the historical continuities between US geopolitics in the 1970s in Afghanistan and even now, one based on treating Eurasia as the Grand Chessboard.

That the pathological competition for diminishing oil and gas is the key factor driving the war in Afghanistan and facilitating systematic double standards in supporting a warmingering autocrat in Georgia is new.

The callous and premeditated destruction of the Glory Monument in Kutaisi was news just as much as the Auschwitz theft.But nowhere has it made it into the Western media apart from one desultory mention by the BBC.

It's curious how parochially minded those who espouse the wonders and greatness of globalisation and cultural exhange between nations can be when the pursuit of oil and gas, of nationalist psychopatlogies and greed prevail.

Then again, after having lived in Central Europe for a decade I have noticed how uncritically pro-American ex-patriate newspapers are, by which I mean the US regime
though many ex-pat Americans oppose their government.

The Slovak Spectator is essentially a neoliberal rag parroting propaganda tropes that mayjust as well come from the Economist's Bill Emmot or the dolt Edward Lucas who criticised Wajda's Katyn for being not anti-Soviet enough.

Lucas seems to think not enough tribute was paid to the Forest Brothers in the Baltics as heroic anti-Soviet partisans. Unfortunately his "New Cold War" propaganda ran aground the fact that the Forest Brother were pro-Nazi.

Then again the Baltic Republics, staunch allies of Poland against Russia do tend to have governments with those who rationalise pro-Nazi collaborats as "partisans" and "freedom fighters" and the West overlooks all of it.



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