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Italian arrested for swiping Auschwitz 'souvenir'

Tourist was found with barbed wire from former Nazi death camp Auschwitz, where his father had been a prisoner; released after investigation

On Sunday, police arrested a 66-year-old Italian citizen over the alleged theft of a piece of barbed wire from Auschwitz museum. The man, detained by officials at Poland's Krakow airport after the wire was found in his luggage, was released after he led police to the area from where the 30-centimeter (1 foot) piece came.

 

Krakow police spokesman Mariusz Ciarka said that taking the wire from that particular area did not violate laws protecting the memorial of the German Nazi death camp. The area is not under protection and represents no special historic significance, according to Auschwitz Museum historians.

 

"The man was arrested on Saturday. He told the police that he wanted a souvenir from Auschwitz because his father died in the camp," Ciarka told AFP.

 

A Frenchman was arrested in Krakow last year for also trying to carry away some barbed wire from Auschwitz.

 

Auschwitz-Birkenau is the most notorious and enduring symbol of the Holocaust, Nazi Germany's wartime campaign of genocide against Europe's Jews.

 

A year after invading Poland in 1939, the Nazis opened what was to become a vast complex on the edge of the southern town of Oswiecim – Auschwitz in German. They later expanded it to the nearby village of Brzezinka, or Birkenau.

 

Of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, 1.1 million were murdered at the site, mostly in its gas chambers, along with tens of thousands of others including Poles, Roman and Soviet prisoners of war.

 

Soviet troops arrived at the camp on January 27, 1945, and the date is now marked as an international Holocaust memorial day.

 

 


פרסום ראשון: 08.12.12, 18:23
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