STOCKHOLM (WJC)–Swedish authorities have confirmed that they have been asked to assist the investigation in Poland into last month’s theft of the entrance sign to the former Auschwitz death camp in Poland. Five men have been remanded in custody in Poland on suspicion of organizing and carrying out the theft of the infamous “Arbeit macht frei” sign, which hung over the gate of the Nazi death camp where 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, were murdered during World War II.
According to a report in the British newspaper ‘The Sunday Mirror’ there was a plan to ship the sign to a group of Swedish neo-Nazis. They were to have kept it in a cellar in the Swedish capital Stockholm until they could transfer it to a wealthy British Nazi sympathizer who had commissioned the theft. Polish police announced the recovery of the sign on 20 December, two days after its disappearance. It had been defaced and cut into three pieces, allegedly in preparation for shipment to a buyer.
The ‘Sunday Mirror’ says a source in Sweden had told one of its reporters that a Polish man identified only as Marcin A. was being held for three months in connection with organizing the theft. The British collector was not named, but according to the report wanted the sign as a trophy.The money he was prepared to pay for it was suspected to have been slated for neo-Nazi activity in Sweden.
Meanwhile, it was reported that the number of visitors to the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz reached a new record in 2009, with over 1.3 million visiting the site.