Hungarian tourists penalized for stealing ‘souvenir’ bricks from Auschwitz – video
According to the Polish police, they admitted that they tried to steal bricks from the ruins of a former crematorium. The 30-year-old woman and the 36-year-old man were charged with theft of a cultural asset. Thus, they were fined 1,500 zlotych (346 EUR) and received a suspended sentence of one year jail – reported hvg.hu.
They just wanted to bring home some souvenirs
The two Hungarian tourists visited the former Nazi German death camp on Saturday. However, during their tour, they tried to steal some bricks from a former crematorium. In fact, the whole camp is a World Heritage Site since 1979, so
all objects on its premises are protected.
The Hungarian couple’s wrongdoing was spotted by other visitors who notified the security. After that, the police was called on the scene. Regional police press officer Mateusz Drwal told Polish news agency PAP that after the couple admitted their deed they added that they just wanted to bring home some souvenirs. However,
they did not realize the consequences of their action.
They were each fined 1,500 zlotych (346 EUR which is more than 110 thousand HUF) and given a suspended sentence of one year jail.
This was not the first time
In fact, Auschwitz-Birkenau was the biggest Nazi German death camp where more than 1 million Jews and 100,000 non-Jewish Roma, Soviet and Polish POWs were exterminated brutally between 1940 and 1945.
The infamous ‘Arbeit macht frei’ sign
In fact, this was not the first time somebody tried to take home some ‘souvenirs’ from the former death camp. In 2015 two British teenagers were arrested because they were suspected to have stolen artifacts. Tartefactscaught digging in the ground in an area where there used to be the barracks for storing the personal items of the prisoners. Marcus Dell and Ben Thompson both 17 in 2015 were on a school trip and
tried to steal metal and glass from the site.
The court of Krakow fined them £400 each and asked to pay £1,250 each to a charity.
In 2017 an Israeli granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, Rotem Bides (27) admitted in an interview that she
stole objects from Auschwitz for an art project.
Later she said that she had no regrets about taking the objects, which included glass shards, small soup bowls, a screw, and a sign saying that it is forbidden to remove objects from the museum. The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum filed a criminal complaint against her, the college where she studies said that it will not display the artifacts anartefactsuld hold a disciplinary hearing on the issue.
In March this year, a 19-year-old Israeli man was
caught urinating near a crematorium
after which he was fined 1,500 dollars.
Of course, the most villainous robbery was in 2009 when a gang
stole the camp’s infamous Arbeit macht frei (“Work makes you free”) sign.
In fact, Swedish neo-Nazi Anders Hoegstroem was behind the theft who was jailed for 2.5 years for his action. The sign was later found cut up into three pieces.
Here is a video on how it was put back together again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fW_4-1PTuQ
Source: hvg.hu, timesofisrael.com, dailymail.co.uk
