AUCHWITZ SIGN OUTRAGE
20 Dec 2009
Jacquie Bell writes
In July I visited Auchwitz/Birkenhau Memorial site. I was moved by the mass of human hair, the toothbrushes and the railway siding going nowhere.
One of my fellow travellers knew that her grandfather had been one of a small number of Jews taken from Italy who had died there. A few years ago I met a Rabbi and his wife who had met there.
The entrance sign "Arbeit Macht Frei" - work makes you free -was one of the great lies of the 20th century. It was a symbol of one of man's greatest inhumanities.
It is hard to say how saddened I am at the overnight theft of the sign - particularly in this year of the 20th anniversary of the fall of that other 20th century symbol - the Berlin Wall.