Stolen: The entry to the camp after the sign was stolen.Cut into three: The infamous sign - Arbeit macht frei (Work sets you free) - shown before it was taken on Friday
Evil deeds: Members of the Frankfurt War Crimes Court leave Auschwitz after a visit in 1964
The sign stolen from the entrance to the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz was found yesterday hundreds of miles away on the other side of Poland.
The infamous sign - which reads 'Arbeit Macht Frei' (Work sets you free) - was found cut into three pieces, each containing one of the words, authorities confirmed.
It had been taken before dawn on Friday.
Polish police said they arrested five men aged between 25 and 39 after finding the steel sign in northern Poland.
Police spokesman Katarzyna Padlo said the men had been taken to Krakow, the nearest city to Auschwitz in southern Poland, for questioning.
The sign over the entrance to the largest concentration camp of the Second World War became a symbol of the atrocities and cruelty of Nazi Germany.
More than one million people, mostly Jews, died at Auschwitz, which Germany built in occupied Poland.
It was still unclear last night why the sign was stolen. It had been suggested that figures from the shadowy Nazi memorabilia network could be behind the crime.
A piece such as the sign could be sold for a small fortune.
Poland's ambassador to Israel, Agnieszka Magdziak-Miszewska, said police information indicated the robbery was 'meticulously planned'.
She said the thieves skilfully avoided CCTV cameras monitoring the entrance to the camp that was opened by the Nazis in 1940 initially to incarcerate Polish political prisoners.
The Nazi slogan on the sign was meant to convey to the prisoners who passed under it that they could attain 'spiritual' freedom through hard work for the Fatherland.
But for most, it was the inscription on a gateway to a living hell.
Auschwitz museum official Pawel Sawicki said: 'It's a symbol of what Auschwitz stands for. But a place where hundreds of thousands died obviously doesn't mean anything to the thieves.'
After the sign went missing it was replaced by a replica. It is unclear whether the original will now be repaired and put back in its former position.
The camp, a former Polish army barracks, was converted by the Nazis into what became known to Holocaust planners as Auschwitz 1.
The linked complex at Birkenau several miles away - with railway lines that transported the Jews of Europe virtually to the doors of the gas chambers - was responsible for most of the 1.1million deaths.
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