Dachau police-chief Thomas Rauscher said local neo-Nazi groups are the prime suspects in the case, and he revealed how police believe the crime was carried out.
The Dachau complex, a Nazi death-camp near Munich, is not monitored by security cameras. The thieves reportedly timed their break-in between the rounds of the security guards walking the site.
The Jewish community in Germany has been left reeling after the theft of the gate. The notorious slogan, translating into English as “Work will set you free,” is symbolic of the cynical attitude of Hitler’s regime.
The vice president of the International Dachau Committee Max Mannheimer, a Holocaust survivor, said he was “horrified that Nazis had apparently desecrated the memorial to those murdered here and violated the reverence due to such a place.”
Gabriele Hermann, the head of the memorial centre, was shocked by the theft.
“It’s a deliberate, reprehensible attempt to deny and obliterate the memory of the crimes committed in this place,” she said to Bild, a German newspaper.
Also speaking to Bild, Dieter Graumann, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, described it as a horrible and shocking desecration.
"Whoever did this is either sick or evil. Probably both,” he said.
