Anders Hoegstroem -- who could have faced up to 10 years in jail if convicted in Poland of masterminding the theft -- admitted his role before the case came to trial, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office in the city of Krakow told Agence France-Presse.
Janke Skarzynski, AFP / Getty Images
Pictured is the main gate at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland. A Swedish man has been sentenced to 32 months in jail after he pleaded guilty to organizing the theft of the gate's sign, which reads "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work sets you free").
"After having pleaded not guilty during the investigation, Hoegstroem admitted his guilt," prosecutor Robert Parys said. "Under a plea bargain with prosecutors, he accepted a penalty of two years and eight months in prison. He will serve his sentence in Sweden."
The infamous sign -- which reads "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work sets you free") in German -- was carelessly wrenched from the concentration camp's gates last December. The "i" in "frei" was left lying in the snow outside Auschwitz. The thieves intended to smuggle the 16-foot metal banner out of the country and sawed the sign into three pieces to make it easier to transport. However, they panicked when the international media began reporting the crime and hid the sign in a woods in northern Poland, where authorities recovered it two days later.
Five Polish men were arrested for carrying out the theft, three of whom were convicted earlier this year and are now serving sentences of between six months and two and a half years. On Thursday, two other members of the Polish gang -- identified only as Marcin A. and Andrzej S. -- pleaded guilty to involvement and were jailed for 30 months and 28 months, respectively.
Hoegstroem was seized in Sweden on a Polish warrant in February. He founded Sweden's virulently anti-immigrant National Socialist Front in 1994, but quit the far-right movement five years later.
Authorities initially suspected that the ex-neo Nazi had masterminded the theft, but they now believe he was acting under orders from a second, as yet unidentified, Swede. Hoegstroem acted under "other obligations resulting from a personal relationship between those two men," Parys said, according to The Guardian, but he didn't elaborate on what those obligations might be.
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Most collectors of Nazi memorabilia are simply World War II buffs eager to own a tangible piece of that conflict. But it seems likely that the unnamed Swede behind the theft had a more sinister motive. The wrought-iron banner sat above the prisoners' entrance to the camp, and its motto of "Work sets you free" was meant to distract new arrivals from their grim fate. They soon realized the unspeakable cynicism it embodied. Between 1939 and 1945, some 1.1 million people -- mostly Jews, but also Polish-Catholics, Gypsies and homosexuals -- were killed in the death camp's gas chambers, shot by guards or simply left to die of cold or starvation.
By ordering the sign's theft, the Swedish collector might have been attempting to remove the reminder of horrific crimes committed there. But ultimately the effort failed, and the sign will continue to serve as a symbol of the brutality and cruelty of the Nazi regime.