Auschwitz sign stealers re-enact theft

Three men who admitted stealing the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign from Auschwitz were made to re-enact the event for investigators today.

Polish police said they were working on theory that the sign, which translates as “Work Sets You Free”, was stolen to order but would not give further details.

They found the sign on Sunday – cut into three pieces and hidden under snow in the woods – and arrested five suspects in northern Poland. Three of the five men have confessed to the theft of the sign, which is a symbol of Nazi Germany atrocities during the Second World War.

Prosecutor Piotr Kosmaty said the three who had confessed were taken back to Auschwitz to show investigators how they unscrewed and tore the iron sign from the gateposts.

He said that the re-enactment gave police some insights.

In Krakow, police displayed the broken sign. Each part bore one of the words. Some of the steel pipe that formed its outline was bent and the letter “i” was missing from the word ”Frei“ because it had been left behind during the theft. It was found at the scene.

A police forensics expert said that cutting and sawing tools used in the theft were found at the home of one of the suspects.

She said experts will be analysing the sign millimetre by millimetre for clues as to how it was cut up and by whom.

Prosecutors will decide when the sign could be returned to the museum and whether it will be back in time for the January 27 ceremonies to mark Auschwitz’s liberation by Soviet troops in 1945.

For now an exact replica of the sign hangs in its place.

After occupying Poland in 1939, the Nazis established the Auschwitz I camp, which initially housed German political prisoners and Polish prisoners. The sign was made in 1940 and placed above the main gate there.

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 they were systematically killed in gas chambers.