Famed entrance sign stolen from Auschwitz 

Source: ReutersThe gate at the entrance to the Auschwitz death camp

The notorious metal sign hanging at the entrance of the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz that reads "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work makes you free") was stolen, officials said.

Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance centre in Jerusalem, called the theft "an attack on the memory of the Holocaust" and the leaders of Poland and Israel condemned the incident during talks on the sidelines of a global climate summit in Copenhagen.

Some 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, perished in the Nazi death camp located in southern Poland during World War Two. Prisoners arriving at the camp used to enter via a relatively small iron gate topped by the German-language motto.

More than 200 hectares (500 acres) of the former death camp became a museum after the war ended.

"Early this morning the guards patrolling the site noticed the sign was not in its place," Jaroslaw Mensfelt, the museum's spokesman, told Reuters. "We immediately notified the police."

Mensfelt said numerous cameras were installed at the site and local police were analysing the film. He said no further details regarding the theft were available.

"We have already installed a replica sign over the gate. It has been used in the past when the original was being repaired. I hope the original will quickly be retrieved and the thieves caught," Mensfelt said. 

"Disgraceful"

"This is not only a theft but a horrible desecration in a place where more than a million people were murdered, in the biggest such site in this part of the world. This really is a disgraceful act."

The wording of the sign became a symbol of the Nazis' efforts to deceive their victims into a false sense of security before murdering them.

Some Jews and other groups arriving at the camp would have thought they were coming to do forced labour, not to be killed as part of a deliberate systematic policy of genocide.

"I was shocked to learn this morning of the theft of the sign, which has come to symbolise the murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust," a statement by Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance centre in Jerusalem, said.

"The theft of such a symbolic object is an attack on the memory of the Holocaust and an escalation from those elements that would like to return us to darker days."

In Copenhagen, Israeli President Shimon Peres told Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk:

"The state of Israel and the Jewish people in their entirety ask that you take the necessary steps to catch the criminals and return the sign to its place."

"The sign is of profound historical significance both for the Jewish people and the entire world and is a memorial for the more than 1 million Jews who were exterminated at this camp."

Auschwitz prisoners died of diseases, sub-zero temperatures, starvation and in medical experiments as well as being gassed.

Tusk vowed to do everything required to catch the thieves.

Hundreds of thousands of people visit the museum every year, but ticket sales are not enough to maintain the open-air site with its 155 buildings -- including the gas chambers - 300 ruined facilities and hundreds of thousands of personal items.

Earlier this year, Poland appealed for international donations to help preserve the site. Britain and Germany, among others, have offered financial help.

In January, Poland marks the 65th anniversary of the camp's liberation by the Red Army. It plans to open a new exhibition in the former prisoners' barracks chronicling the liberation.