The "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign theft from Oswiecim, Poland

I wouldn't be surprised if 'the sign' will appear some time later in...Yad Vashem in Israel
Just like some wall paintings of Bruno Schultz were stolen in 2001 from Drohobych in Ukraine

A lot of Jewish people have visited Oswięcim lately so it is possible :)

Photos from the hunt for the thieves:

spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-49970.html

thanx.

the pictures answer a question i asked earlier. the thieves had to get into the grounds of the museum before carrying out the deed.

LAst minute news: the thieves were detained. The sign was recovered in northern Poland. Cut into 3 pieces.

Have you a link, please?

pawian

Strange. I wonder who they were and why they cut it into three?

Maybe to send one of the words back as proof they had it and get a ransom for the rest?

Ha..if some local Poles have stolen it just for scrap metal they sure picked the wrong target...I am sure there are tons of unatended metal around Poland that they could have stolen , and probably got away with...But these dummies decided to steal a sign that had every cop in Poland looking for it... Its good the sign is recovered though before Israel launched a nuclear strike on Poland..

They cut it in three, most likely, because it's a giant sign and they wanted to transport it easily, perhaps ship it places. It would be hard to conceal such a lengthy piece of iron. If the information turns out to be true, the sign will have to be welded back together and perhaps welded onto the fence to keep it from getting taken again.

PlasticPole

Thanks for expaining to Jon that 4 meter metal piece is hard to lug around and that metal can be cut and welded again.

Good news anyway. The sign is on it's way back.

southern

I know that the sign was already discovered, but I must admit, this is the funniest comment I've seen in this thread yet.

Stolen on Friday and recovered on Monday. I am impressed.

The Americans still cannot find Bin Laden after 8 years and the UK police would have issued you with a crime number to claim on the insurance. The Polish police cannot be that bad then.

It was found near Thorn, Reichsgau Danzig-Westpreussen.

.. That's because he's dead and buried. Haven't seen anymore 'broadcasts' lately, right?

I hope they get what is coming to them. How dare they...

The cutting of the sign into pieces is the biggest failiure and evidence of Polish anti-semitism say the Israeli Jews.

Just watch.


wasnt it already? Personally i dont see a big deal, we could just place a copy but hey the Jews are watching and twiddling their thumbs ...

What a sarcastic post! Says a lot about you.

The point is that:

a) We don't know where it was cut up - on site causing noise and taking time, or later.

b) To steal it from such a place must have taken huge planning - the size of the sign would have been the least of their worries.

c) The sign's value and historical integrity would have been compromised by damaging it.

d) They almost certainly had a lorry - it would be strange to "lug it around".

e) Its appearance (it had been zinc-plated and structurally reinforced a few years ago) would also have been damaged and will now need very careful conservation work.

f) We don't know if they were planning to reassemble it right away (see point e) or whether they had other plans.

The only broadcast I have seen recently, was your General Mc Crystal stating that "the war may be winnable", if they could find and kill Bin Laden.

I suggest you listen to your own propoganda and get ready to waste another $50 billion next year.

Grzegorz_
and I believe that cutting it to pieces it's the fault of lack of space in the trunk

Just buy another here for 60 bucks.
artsignsinteriors.com/store/auschwitz-sign-stolen-arbeit-macht-frei-tribute-replica-sign-1.html

BTW, I think the Polish police did an admirable job and they deserve a round of applause! How many of you thought the sign would never again be found, or at least not on Polish soil? I am ashamed to admit that I did, for one.

The museum contains seven paintings by an inmate, Dina Gottliebova Babbitt. Ms Babbitt spent 33 years attempting to recover the paintings and wanted them to be placed in them in Holocaust museums in the United States (Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum displayed at that time only copies (for security reasons) and still rotates between displaying originals and copies). The position of the museum was that they legally bought the paintings but then when it became clear under international law that merely buying stolen art work in good faith did not give any rights to it, they changed tack and invoked the legal principle of 'work for hire': the concept that the patron, not the artist, holds the rights to a commissioned work of art. Their stance is that Dr Mengele commissioned the work and so only he has the right to them. As he doesn't want them, they belong to the Polish state. In 1973 the museum wrote to Ms Babbitt saying "if anyone has a right to these paintings, it's Dr. Mengele, but I doubt he will pick them up."

The position of the museum can be found here. News articles about Ms Babbitt are here, here and here. There's a copy of a letter from the museum from January of this year in which they repeat their stance that "the portraits

of Gypsies made in the camp by Mrs. Dina Gottliebova-Babbitt have never
been her property".

Got to love a museum which considers the rights of the sick bastards who carried out the holocaust as more important than the rights of the victims of the holocaust.

Magdalena

They found it really quickly.

When the news was announced, I wondered if every police force in the country had been put on the case and were checking likely suspects.

After all - it was founds hundreds of miles away - which complicates the investigation process.

If there are cameras on roads round Oswiecim, I suppose they could have checked the footage for vehicles - but that would have taken too long.

Good news that they found it.

Criminals, no Neo-Nazis...

spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,668286,00.html

najciemniej pod latarnią:) maybe they thought nobody would notice...


there might have been witnesses.besides i think 115 000 zl motivated many people to look for it

I think everyone, including my government and the honorable members of this forum, should wait and see what exactly happened before making statements and accusations. What's interesting is how an incident like this arouses so much comment and how the comments are all so predictable.

You are coming to conclusions like that one and then you are surprised that nobody takes you seriously ... You are an empirical evidence that there is often a tenuous connection between education and critical thought.

Can you perhaps explain why the museum considers the ownership rights of Dr Mengele to be superior to those of the artist who created the work? They very clearly do consider that to be the case, hence their statements "if anyone has a right to these paintings, it's Dr. Mengele" and "the portraits

of Gypsies made in the camp by Mrs. Dina Gottliebova-Babbitt have never been her property".

Alternatively you can simply admit that your standard knee-jerk reactions (i.e. 'Jews have no rights, they are all scum' and 'any time a non-Pole says anything bad about anything Polish, I must automatically and unquestioningly support that Polish thing') are all that you base your statement on and you did not mean to take the side of those who support the perpetrators of the holocaust over the victims of the holocaust..

I think the Babbit case is less about Polish Jewish relations and more about museum vs creator. There are often similar issues with native american art and museums. Museums always care more about the object than the people associated with them.

Which is precisely why I made it very clear in this post that my problem is very much with the museum and in this post that I am perfectly fine with the nation of Poland.


I wouldn't say that they always do that. However I will say that it is always wrong for them to care more about objects than about innocence people.