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12/21/2009

Polish police have said that the men arrested in connection with last Friday's theft of the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign at Auschwitz are not neo-Nazis.

On Monday, Polish police told reporters that the arrested men, aged between 25 and 39 had no known neo-Nazi links. "From the information we have none of the five belong to a neo-Nazi group, nor hold such ideas," Andrzej Rokita, police commander for the southern Krakow region said. He added that they had previous criminal records for theft or violence.

"Their intent was undoubtedly robbery-related. We will be able to decide later whether the crime was ordered or whether they acted on their own initiative."

After a three-day intensive man hunt the five suspects were arrested late on Sunday night. The sign was found near the home of one of the men in northern Poland, hours away from the southern Polish town where the former concentration camp is located. Police said that the 5-meter (16-foot) sign had been cut into three pieces.

The 'Most Important' Symbol of the Past Century

Pawel Sawicki, a spokesman for the Auschwitz museum, said that the recovery of the sign was an "enormous relief." He told the Agence France Presse news agency that "this symbol, probably one of the most important of the past century, can be put back in its place."

The theft, perpetrated during the early hours of Friday morning, provoked an international outrage. The sign, which means "Work Will Set You Free" topped the entrance to the gate of the Auschwitz camp which was established by the Nazis in occupied Poland during World War II and was liberated by the Soviet army on Jan. 27, 1945. It was one of the many extermination camps in which the Third Reich murdered 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had called on Poland to act to find "these twisted criminals that desecrated the place where over a million Jews were murdered." He added that the sign is "of deepest historical importance to the Jewish people and the whole world, and is a tombstone for more than a million Jews."