The theft of the 'Arbeit Macht Frei' sign from the entrance gate at Auschwitz is a shameful act and, as historian Jaroslaw Mensfeld is reported as saying, a 'desecration'. It is, likewise, an 'appalling act of vandalism'. I don't, however, agree with a note that is struck, twice, in today's Times. Roger Boyes writes:
Remove the sign, the neo-Nazis may well have speculated, and you begin the process of dismantling Holocaust memory.
An editorial concludes thus:
Such a theft is especially chilling at a time when, once again, crazed voices seek to suggest that reports of the Holocaust are at best wildly exaggerated, and are possibly even apocryphal. But rather than hiding evidence of the Nazis' crimes, these thieves in Poland have reminded the world how vital it is that such symbols of the Holocaust survive across the world so that we may never dare forget the evil of the Nazis.
It is true that the calculation registered in these statements is one ascribed to the presumed neo-Nazi vandals: that if they can hide or destroy this relic, they undermine the basis on which we know the truth about what happened in Poland. But both statements, particularly the second, can also be read as making a concession to this viewpoint. I think it is a mistake to do so - comparable to the error in thinking that with the last of survivors now dying out, it will become more difficult to combat Holocaust-denial. There is no need of survivors of the Great Plague or of the Wars of the Roses for us to be confident that these events really happened, and the same will be true of the Holocaust when there are no more survivors of that. Equally, that one or even a few material symbols of the Nazi genocide should be stolen or destroyed, will not significantly alter the balance of historical evidence and testimony concerning its occurrence. This balance is overwhelming, and those who know that it is shouldn't adopt locutions which might suggest there are only a few tenuous evidential shreds that we are in danger of losing.
The theft is indeed revolting but it doesn't have any significance for the security of the truth in this case.