Auschwitz 'Arbeit Macht Frei' Sign Stolen

[bijou]

WARSAW, Poland  —  The infamous iron sign bearing the Nazis' cynical slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei" that spanned the main entrance to the former Auschwitz death camp was stolen before dawn Friday, Polish police said....

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,580525,00.html?test=latestnews

[DefiantSix]

Don't worry; The Øne will return it when he's done makin' copies for the FEMA camps.

[littlelamb]

That is sick the things that people will do

[SilverOrchid]

Who the hell does that?

[DefiantSix]

Who the hell does that?

Usually snot-nosed college kids, after a few too many JagerMeisters.

And if this bothers you more so than what made that sign notorious in the first place, I suggest a re-check of your priorities might be in order.

[SilverOrchid]

Usually snot-nosed college kids, after a few too many JagerMeisters.

And if this bothers you more so than what made that sign notorious in the first place, I suggest a re-check of your priorities might be in order.

Alrighty then. I think you misunderstood. I just think that is a odd thing to steal in the first place. I do not condone what the sign means.

[DefiantSix]

Alright then.

Sorry.  Wasn't meaning to jump on you about what you posted.  Just trying to keep stuff in perspective.

[SilverOrchid]

Sorry.  Wasn't meaning to jump on you about what you posted.  Just trying to keep stuff in perspective.

It is cool. I posted my meaning above.

[littlelamb]

I think it is sad I have been there and saw that sign in person. Walked the grounds and just cried for those lost. The ones that stole the sign should be put into a gas chamber themselves

[DefiantSix]

I think it is sad I have been there and saw that sign in person. Walked the grounds and just cried for those lost. The ones that stole the sign should be put into a gas chamber themselves.

That's the kind of misplaced priorities I'm concerned about.

This whole incident reminds me of the words from Lincoln's Gettysberg Address:

The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

Vandals can tear the whole camp down, and it still will not detract one whit from why the site is important.  It will not "un-hallow" that ground, or disturb the rest of those souls who went to their deaths there.  They are no less safe in the arms of their Heavenly Father now, than they were when they walked into those "showers" 65 years ago.

As far as the world forgetting the message that the camp's continued existence is supposed to send, how many other, in some casess WORSE, genocidal purges have been purpetrated upon the peoples of the Earth SINCE Auschwitz?  I think that the evil in the world have done a superb job of IGNORING the message of Auschwitz, just as the good people of the Earth - such as yourself - cannot forget that message.  In either case, Auschwitz itself is not needed to reinforce the messsage.

[littlelamb]

That's the kind of misplaced priorities I'm concerned about.

This whole incident reminds me of the words from Lincoln's Gettysberg Address:
Vandals can tear the whole camp down, and it still will not detract one whit from why the site is important.  It will not "un-hallow" that ground, or disturb the rest of those souls who went to their deaths there.  They are no less safe in the arms of their Heavenly Father now, than they were when they walked into those "showers" 65 years ago.

As far as the world forgetting the message that the camp's continued existence is supposed to send, how many other, in some casess WORSE, genocidal purges have been purpetrated upon the peoples of the Earth SINCE Auschwitz?  I think that the evil in the world have done a superb job of IGNORING the message of Auschwitz, just as the good people of the Earth - such as yourself - cannot forget that message.  In either case, Auschwitz itself is not needed to reinforce the messsage.

That is true I just get mad thinking of the ugly things happening no I will never forget that place and do my best to remember it and teach my children about it's history.

[Daisy]

Tears fall down my face and upon my heart when I think of the torture of my people that happened in that place.That happened in Germany at the apex of her civilation. That's reason to be ever vigilent.....

[ColonialMarine0431]

Appauling. I've been there too. The place sent shivers through me.

[SVPete]

In either case, Auschwitz itself is not needed to reinforce the messsage.

Theoretically, this is correct. For decent folk, the knowledge of what happened suffices; for those inclined to evil, a day-long docented personal tour would matter little. Personally, I knew quite a bit of what the Nazis did, but when I visited Dachau in 2000 it all became much more "real" to me somehow. I posted this reflection about that visit on another discussion forum:

In 2000, Mrs. SVPete and I spent a week and a half in southern Germany, Dachau being one of our day trips. Dachau was once an artist's colony. More to the point, Dachau also has a WW1-vintage factory workers' camp that Hitler took over to imprison political foes. After the war, it was cleaned up some and used to house refugees. Afterward, the barracks were demolished, but the administration buildings remained. As a museum, the administration buildings are used for displays, and two "barracks" buildings rebuilt and set up to represent four stages of how the actual barracks buildings looked at various stages in the camp's history. The rest of the grounds have markers indicating where barracks buildings had been, and at the far end of the open grounds, there is a chapel. Near the chapel is a gateway to where the crematorium is, and to an experimental building that prototyped the gas chamber-showers used in Auschwitz. In all of the buildings, I had a heavy sense of the evil that had been done there - a feeling that was/is a mix of what I knew/know and what is shown there. This clashed with two incongruities. First, the place is relatively quiet and peaceful - it isn't crowded, nor are those touring noisy. Second is the physical surroundings of the camp that are part of the museum. As a memorial to those who died there and whose ashes were scattered about the perimeter of the camp, groups (many of them Jewish) have created a semi-wild, semi-cultivated belt of trees, bushes, grasses and flowers that are absolutely gorgeous (we were there in May). Whether by intent or by coincidence, this physical beauty combined with the sense of the evil that happened there was and is very haunting. Dachau also reminded me that, however unpleasant the thought might be, Dachau and Auschwitz are examples of what humans are capable of when unleashed from internal and external moral restraints.

This is a lengthy blog post, including pix, about the writer's visit to Auschwitz: “We have to go into the despair and go beyond it, by working and doing for somebody else, by using it for something else.”.

[ColonialMarine0431]

From the link.

In the basement, you can enter or peek into rooms labeled as “starvation rooms”, dark stultifying chambers where they put people to starve to death; a “suffocation room”, which was sealed and into which the Nazis would sometimes put a burning candle to use up the oxygen; and worst of all, the “standing cells.” You can actually stand in one of these today. There are four of these cells, all in one tiny little cave of a dark room, and they are 3 x 3 feet. Four men would be put in each of these cells at the same time, for days and weeks on end. No ventilation, no light, no ability to sit or lie down. And they were only taken out during the day to slave-labor.

Never again.

[Hawkgirl]

Visual cues are not something to dismiss so easily.  Sort of like a headstone.  I still won't visit the grave of a friend of mine who died as I know it will break me down.  I know HE's not there...but seeing his name on a headstone will cut deep.

I feel the same for music.  You know how when you hear a certain song, it triggers a memory.

The sign must trigger feelings for a lot of jews and especially those who lost family in Auschwitz.

[Oceander]

The Nazi death camps are viscerally disturbing; however, let us not forget that, compared to Mao and Stalin, Hitler and the Nazis were amateurs (in both primary senses of the word - not fully competent, but also lovers thereof).  There's a gent on the web who's been kind enough to sort through the various data sources and at least find the medians of the numbers each reports - it's not a pretty picture of humanity:  Source List and Detailed Death Tolls for the Twentieth Century Hemoclysm, by Matthew White.

In very, very round numbers, the top three political murderers are (i.e., the numbers reflect those killed on account of political policy choices, and exclude those killed in the ordinary conduct of the various wars these leaders were involved in):

(1) Chairman Mao - approximately 40,000,000 deaths can be laid at his feet and the feet of his communist party

(2) Josef Stalin - approximately 20,000,000 deaths can be laid at his feet and the feet of his communist party

(3) Adolph Hitler - approximately 15,500,000 deaths can be laid at his feet and the feet of his fascist Nazi party


God bless progressive political ideologies of the sort that Sen. Sanders (Vt) and Barack Obama wish to emulate.


The sign?  Barack'll probably have it back in the Spring, after he's finished having a copy made up for the new gazebo in his back yard.

[SVPete]

My Grandmother lost a couple of brothers to Stalin. She, her husband and their first-born came to the US in 1904, knowing what was coming. Her brothers were in an elite regiment in the Russian Army (they were among the Czar's bodyguards, from what I was told) and stayed in Russia. They were in contact until the late 20s, and then silence. They were the sons of a land-owning farmer, ethnic Germans and from the Ukraine. Did they die in the Solovetsky Islands? A dank, obscure basement? Working on the Belomor Canal? The Kolyma gold field camps? The Vorkuta timber cutting camps? The Ukrainian terror famine? I'll almost certainly never know. That was some 25 years before I was born and didn't touch me personally. But I won't forget that Stalin was one of the worst monsters so far in human history, in the same league as Mao, Hitler and Lenin.

For some reason, Russia hasn't seen fit, that I've heard, to open a large-scale Gulag memorial at the Belomor Canal (Kolyma, Vorkuta and the Solovetsky Islands being rather remote, the lack of a memorial would make sense even if the will were there). Between that lack of a public revelation/reminder and Vlad the Impaler II, I would not be surprised if Russian repression reached Leninist-Stalinist scale in 10 or 20 years.

[SVPete]

On a more general note, the demonization of Trotsky, Hitler and Mussolini as "rightist" or "fascist" is just propaganda lines meaning little more than, "Political competitors trying to accomplish the same ends by very slightly different means." The biggest difference I've noticed between Lenin-Stalin and Hitler was that Hitler had sense enough not to to kill off productive people like farmers and industrialists. By not killing them, Hitler made them, their assets and their knowledge slaves of the government. Think Hitler's racism was a distinction? Ask the Ukrainians, Volga Germans and Chechens! Think Stalin was less nationalist? Ask Eastern Europeans subjugated to the USSR for for a generation or two!.

[ColonialMarine0431]

My Mom's family fled Germany when Hitler came to power. They knew. They were wealthy enough to be able to book passage. And no. We're not Jews. They left because we had relatives here in the States and we wanted no part of that SOB Hitler. My Great Uncle lost a leg in Belgium fighting those monsters.

[Oceander]

My Mom's family fled Germany when Hitler came to power. They knew. They were wealthy enough to be able to book passage. And no. We're not Jews. They left because we had relatives here in the States and we wanted no part of that SOB Hitler. My Great Uncle lost a leg in Belgium fighting those monsters.

It would make no difference whether your family were Jews or full-blood Aryans, thank God they had sense enough, and luck enough, to escape the carnage; they were smart people, your folks, and it's good to see that their wisdom appears to have come down through the generations.

[The Village Idiot]

No updates on this story?

[SVPete]

I found this through Bing: Reward Offered for Stolen Auschwitz Death Camp Sign. According to the results list, the story had been e-published ~3 hours ago.

[TheSarge]

A lot of work to free that sign. 

[SVPete]

That's what I've been thinking! That thing has to weigh hundreds of pounds, and be several yards long. Removing, transporting and storing it wasn't trivial ... and not noticed?