Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial institute expressed "shock" Friday at the theft of the "Arbeit macht frei" (work brings freedom) sign hanging over the gate to the Nazi death camp Auschwitz in Poland, DPA reported.
"I was shocked to learn this morning of the theft of the sign, which has come to symbolize the murder of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust," Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev said in a statement sent to the German Press Agency dpa.
He called the theft of "such a symbolic object" an "attack on the memory of the Holocaust."
"I call on all enlightened forces in the world - who fight against anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia and the hatred of the Other, to join together to combat these trends," said Shalev.
Poland's ambassador to Israel condemned the incident as a crime against the memory of the Holocaust. She told Israel Radio the theft appeared to have been planned in advance, because the unknown vandals used the changing of the guards, which takes some six minutes, to remove it with force.
Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom, of the ruling Likud party, who recently visited Auschwitz, called the theft a "despicable crime" and "desecration of the site which has such a deep meaning to us."
Diaspora Minister Yuli Edelstein called the incident a "serious failure" by Polish security at a time when expressions of anti- Semitism were on the rise. The anti-Semites and the deniers of the Holocaust "have no red lines," he told Israel radio.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau camp was established by Germans in 1940 in Oswiecim, a city in Nazi-occupied Poland. Over a million people, most of them Jews, were killed at the camp, which was spread over three sites. Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz II, was the site of the gas chambers.
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