I have, and will always have until the day I die, a biased view of this because I remember being in elementary school and the ONLY thing they taught the class about the Jews was the Holocaust. There was no mention of the Jewish people collectively in any other context - they were shown to us only as faceless, emaciated, naked corpses. It was terminally humiliating and made me bitterly resent the class’s harping on the Holocaust. I’ll never forget the feeling of being part of (what I saw as) a doomed race whose sole mention in our civilization’s history is as victims of an atrocity.
A very lengthy article about the theft that details the barriers around the sign -
That does seem like a lot of work for a prank, but some of the sources in the article suggest that if it’s not a political statement, the sign could have been stolen for a collector of stolen goods. And as far as a replacement:
War crimes don’t stop because we ‘learn lessons’. They stop because the technology and tactics of war change and the culture of war changes with them. Slavery, for example, used to be an accepted feature of war in the Western world: Raid the village, kill everyone able to fight back, and take the rest as cheap labor. It isn’t anymore, not because of any Grand Lesson but because the tactics and the technology have changed so it’s no longer plausible.
On one level I kind of admire the ballsiness of it. Like I would a well executed museum heist in a movie.
I was discussing war more than war crimes. Murder based on religion or ethnicity isn’t a tactic and it certainly still happens.
I immediately suspected certain members of my sophomore German class. The ones who inscribed that very legend above our classroom door.
Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid has lost her head a few times - cause: drunken pranksters.
Oslo’s Sinnataggen (“Angry Young Man”) has been stolen at least twice - cause: drunken pranksters.
Any city that has a famous statue small enough to be stolen by two or three people likely has a similar story to tell, and usually the cause is: drunken pranksters.
Admittedly neither of the examples I mentioned has anything like the historical or political significance of the Auschwitz sign, but my gut instinct is saying: Don’t rule out drunken pranksters. Perhaps somewhere in Poland, a group of college students woke up Friday morning after an end-of-exams party with a whopping hangover and a big, big problem…
The exam sessions aren’t for another month and a half, so that’s probably not that.
Plus, the theft occurred between two internal museum security patrols, after the thieves forced a gate open, and were most probably moving by car. It seems planned, and not just a ‘Hey, dude, listen, I got this idea, what if we, are you with me?, what if we took that sign from Auschwitz, eh? That’d be like so awesome!’ kind of thing.
I do hope it is returned safely.
You’re not wrong, but now-a-days people, especially young people don’t put so much importance on such stuff.
The Simpsons even parodied this when Bart cuts the head off of the town founder’s statue
A lot of the attitude is, “Oh who cares, we know it happened, stop living in the past.”
After 65 years more or less, things tend to lose meaning, whether they deserve to or not
I am keeping an eye on eBay in case it comes up.
What are you going to do, put it up in your living room?
The kids’ room.
It’s my suspicion that the original was, long ago, spirited away to some collectors private collection. This “fortunately, we happened to have a spare” thing kind of sounds a bit too convenient for me.
hh
But then why do you thinks it’s been pounded in our heads since we were little kids? There must be some good reason why all the history books remind us to:
"Never for… " …ummmmm…
uh, No… let’s see that’s, uh…
"Always… "
…no wait… just gimme a second… it’ll come to me… Oh yeah…!
It’s: "Always don’t ever… "
No, that’s not it, it’s… it’s…
“Never forever!”
or, hrmmm… is it…
“Never foreskin?”
…that’s not right it’s… ummmm… Scheiß!! It’s on the tip of my tongue!
I feel like such a dummkopf, untermensch schmuck! Can I get a little help here? How could it slip my mind? I mean, it’s practically tattooed onto your arm in school because “everyone’s always dwelling on it”, yet I can’t seem to figure this out… if only I could think of the final solution to this problem! I was sure I’d Never Forget!
(Sigh…) Maybe you’re right, Argent. I mean, what’s six million Jews between friends? Those yammering, unforgiving, unforgetting Nazi-haters should get with the pogrom!
I’m not sure if this is hilarious or offensive…
Oh probably a prefect blend of both.
Eh, I am probably still within the “young people” range, and honestly, were it any number of other historical markers/memorials/etc, I probably wouldn’t really care. But - and I could be showing my bias here, since even though I’m not a Jew I was raised as such, and thus heard a lot about the Holocaust as a child - while that sign isn’t an important object in and of itself (after all, it could be a replica, and regardless it’s just an iron sign), it’s function is incredibly important. That sign, and everything else that remains at that camp, is the only form of grave marker that a million and some people will ever have. And while I’m not a spiritual person, and certainly not someone who does cling to the past, I wouldn’t think to begrudge those affected of that memorial.
Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about the “never again” mindset (because…it has happened again, and is happening again, and no one’s doing much about it), but I think leaving the death camps as preserved as possible is a powerful statement: This happened here. Over a million people were murdered here. Because frankly, despite having read considerably in depth about the Holocaust, I still have no idea why anyone thinks that there’s anything to be added to that message.
The shit that the Nazis built is not worthy of being a monument. If this were a statue or monument to all those killed at Auschwitz (Jewish and Gentile) I would be pissed. As it is, it is simply something that the Nazis created, part of their evil war machine, and like everything the Nazis created, it deserves to float away and dissolve into history. Fuck it. Let it disintegrate, rot, be stolen, whatever.
Argent Towers, although we still disagree, I do see your point. If I were still teaching, I would change my presentation because of what you just said. But I would still be certain that my students did not leave my class ignorant of the Holocaust.
I didn’t know about the Holocaust until I was about 18. That sounds strange, but it just wasn’t talked about where I lived in the 1950s. We had no Jews. I read The Diary of Anne Frank, but I did not fully understand what was going to happen to her. Then I read the book I Cannot Forgive and it just shook me up.
In my post I also made a mistake in putting Rhodesia when I was thinking Rwanda.
MPB in Salt Lake writes:
> The translation is “Work Will Make You Free” which the Nazi’s used to give a
> false sense of hope to their victims
Actually, it was a general Nazi motto, not one aimed only at prisoners. It meant something like “Self-sacrifice brings spiritual freedom.”