In Brussels, European Parliament president Jerzy Buzek, a former Polish prime minister, appealed to the thieves to return the sign: "Give it back out of respect for the suffering of over a million victims, murdered in this Nazi camp, the biggest cemetery of humankind," Buzek said.
"Traumatised, starved, and soaked with human waste, we looked to be the inhuman, useless creatures the Nazis had characterized us as being. This camp did not look like any I had seen before. Along the inside ran what seemed to be an electric line. Perched above in towers were green-uniformed Waffen SS. Their guns pointed into the camp.posted by jokeefe at 1:30 PM on December 18, 2009 [26 favorites]
"As we were driven further, we heard an orchestra playing and people singing. 'Today Poland. Tomorrow the entire world,' they sang in German. Each refrain had a different verse and mentioned a different country. When the trucks stopped, we heard: 'We're marching on England today, and tomorrow on the entire world!'
"A sign at the gate read: 'Stop, high voltage!' Above the gate another sign read 'Auschwitz', and below it, 'Arbeit Macht Frei.' We knew it wasn't meant to be a promise, not even a pledge. The truth was that we were here to work until we died. In front of a small shack a conductor directed 30 musicians. The scene was grotesque.
"Once inside, our truck turned left and stopped in front of one of the huge three-story brick buildings. A smartly dressed SS sergeant took charge of us. 'Down,' he shouted, as the rest of the SS began to enforce his order."
Working under the cover of darkness and timing their theft between regular security patrols, the culprits unscrewed the 90-pound steel banner on one side and tore it off on the other, then carried it 300 yards to an opening in a concrete wall.I would think a collector would want both sides unscrwed so that it doesn't damage the object.
When, for protection and defence, we'll alwaysSo the Nazis ruined that hope that Hoffman and many others had and twisted the words that urged German speaking peoples to cast aside their differences and turned it into a frightening death threat.
stand together as brothers
From the Meuse to the Memel,
From the Adige to the Belt,
Germany, Germany above everything,
Above everything in the world.
Because humor interfered with their propaganda and revealed the awful truth about the Nazis, they were quite afraid of humor. Hitler, wrote one biographer, had "a horror of being laughed at." . . .
One of the first actions of the new Nazi government was the creation of a "Law against treacherous attacks on the state and party and for the protection of the party uniform." As Hermann Goering reminded the Academy of German Law, telling a joke could be an act against the Führer and the state. Under this law, telling and listening to anti-Nazi jokes were acts of treason. Several people were even put on trial for naming dogs and horses "Adolf." Between 1933 and 1945, five thousand death sentences were handed down by the "People's Court" for treason, a large number of them for anti-Nazi humor. . . .
Eventually, the Nazis closed all the cabarets. Many of the performers were sent to prison camps, where cabaret humor often reappeared. Even in Dachau, a play satirizing the Nazis was performed for six weeks in the summer of 1943. The lead character, Count Adolar, was a thinly disguised Hitler. The SS were seated at the front as "honored guests." Rudolf Kalmar, the writer of the play, survived the camp and became a popular actor in East Germany after the war. Another survivor, described the effect of this satire on the camp inmates: "Many of them, who sat behind the rows of the SS each night and laughed with a full heart, didn't experience the day of freedom. But most among them took from this demonstration strength to endure their situation. . . . They had the certainty, as they lay that night on their wooden bunks: We have done something that gives strength to our comrades. We have made the Nazis look ridiculous."posted by flug at 5:15 PM on December 18, 2009 [13 favorites]
All I'm saying is it looks awesome hanging in my frat house basement.This is a joke about Skull and Bones legendarily stealing the bones of Geronimo and displaying them in their frathouse. The only connection to the Holocaust is that it is a joke made upon the occasion of the theft of an item which was an iconic symbol of it. This has nothing to do with "Dead Jews" and is about the stupid, oblivious assholes who steal historically important things for frivolous reasons. It is the stupidity and obliviousness which are being made light of, and not the dead.
I think you should put it in the attic.
Huh. I read on Stormfront that there was a sign there, but it said "Eat at Joes"This is a joke about the inanity and dishonesty of fascists and Holocaust deniers. This relates to "Dead Jews" only in that the specific subject of their inanity and dishonesty is the Holocaust. It is the inanity and dishonesty which are being made light of, and not the dead.
ten bucks says it was the teabaggers.This is a joke about the racism and proto-fascist ideology of the American "Tea Party" movement, which has had several admirers of Hitler in it. It is the racism and proto-facism which are being made light of, and not the dead.
Interpol released a sketch of the suspect this afternoon.This links to a picture of Carmen Sandiego, the star antagonist of a series of educational videogames in which an international ring of thieves steals things based not on their monetary value, but on their historical value. The joke here is that the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign is an absurd thing to steal, and is the sort of thing which would only be stolen by Carmen Sandiego. It is the absurdity of the theft which is being made light of, and not the dead.
Just wait until the Holocaust Sign Deniers start showing up. There never was a sign! That's just what the Zionist conspiracy wants you to believe!This is a joke about the absurdity and rank dishonesty of Holocaust deniers, who attempt to persuade people to accept the proposed unreality of the Holocaust despite the overwhelming evidence of it, including the testimony of concentration camp survivors who are alive today. It is the absurdity and dishonesty which are being made light of, and not the dead.
One hopes that when these knuckleheads are caught, they're taken to the courthouse in a railcar.which does in fact trivialize the horrors of Auschwitz.
"The visitor to Auschwitz knows he is walking along that same platform where half a century ago Dr Mengele was directing victims to the gas chambers. He is looking at the same electrified fence that had imprisoned countless slave labourers.I don't know why it makes a difference to see the Real Thing rather than a picture, or a replica. Maybe it's because with the real thing you can feel the people connected to it -- the hands that made it, the many that walked under it.
And he is walking through the same gate and beneath the very same sign that cynically offered hope, but in reality promised only destruction. Or at least he was until Friday.
The experimental character of the camps is clear to us today and arouses an existential horror. We know now that the German camps, whether intended for work or for extermination, were not, so to speak, a by-product of conditions of national emergency (the Nazi revolution first, then the war). They were not an unfortunate transitory necessity, but the early seedlings of the New Order. In the New Order some human races (Jews, Gypsies) would be wiped out while others, for example the Slavs in general and the Russians in particular, would be enslaved and subject to a carefully controlled regime of biological degradation, transforming individuals into good labouring animals, illiterate, devoid of all initiative, incapable of either rebellion or criticism.posted by Abiezer at 7:27 PM on December 18, 2009 [5 favorites]
The camps were thus largely 'pilot plants', an anticipation of the future assigned to Europe in Nazi planning. In the light of these considerations, phrases such as the one at Auschwitz, 'Work makes free', or the one at Buchenwald, 'To each his own', take on a precise and sinister meaning. they are, in their turn, an anticipation of the new tablets of the Law, dictated by master to slave, and valid only for the slave.
If Fascism had prevailed, the whole of Europe would have been transformed into a complex system of forced labour and extermination camps, and those cynically edifying words would have read on the entrance to every workshop and every worksite.
"All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes - all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience."The problem with that thinking is that, it you truly intend to follow it for every time and place people have been monstrous to each other, pretty soon the entire world will be the equivalent of one giant white cross or ghost bike on the side of the road.
The Polish authorities said the crime had been well planned. Police are investigating whether it was done to order from a collector – although officially no motive has been suggested for the theft. “The profit motive played a large role,” said Andrzej Rokita, a police inspector, during a news conference on Monday.posted by electroboy at 7:57 AM on December 21, 2009
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posted by lumensimus at 12:14 PM on December 18, 2009