Auschwitz Museum Thief Steals Holocaust Items From Concentration Camp Memorial For Art Project

An Israeli student stole a number of valuable Holocaust artifacts from Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum to exhibit them as part of an art project at Beit Berl College in Kfar Saba, Israel.

Rotem Bides visited the museum — a former Nazi death camp — in Poland half a dozen times and “took” a number of items such as spoons, burnt soup bowls, pieces of glass, metal screw, soil, and the sign prohibiting visitors from illegally taking anything from the museum, the Independent reported.

Bides displayed the stolen items in a college project along with a set of unusual items like a vial of her own blood, a rabbit’s leg from Poland and water from a river where ashes of Holocaust victims were thrown into, the Independent reported.

Bides did not deny stealing the artifacts, but was not ready to brand her action as a crime. The 27-year-old, whose grandparents were both Holocaust survivors, said by her act she was asserting her right to twist the laws governing her era as that is what the German government was doing during the Nazi regime.

“The statement I’m making here is that laws are determined by humans, and that morality is something that changes from time to time and from culture to culture. These are the things I want to deal with. I am a third generation to the Holocaust, but I’m not saying I’m allowed to do it because my grandfather was in Auschwitz. I’m simply asking the questions,” Bides said, according to the report.

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She further added she committed the theft because she was “concerned that after all the survivors are gone, the Holocaust will turn into a myth, something that cannot be perceived.”

Auschwitz-Birkenau is synonymous with the Holocaust. Millions of Jews and Poles were murdered there by the German regime during the Second World War, Lonely Planet reports.

The museum, however, did not see Bides’ act as an expression of cultural freedom. Instead, they condemned the act, stating they will be filing charges for the same. The museum has also demanded the objects be returned. Following the museum’s allegation, the faculty of Bides’ college was forced to shut down Bides’ exhibition and summoned her for disciplinary hearings.

“It’s painful and outrageous. The Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial is a protected site that stands as testimony of the tragedy of the Holocaust and World War II, which should be preserved for the next generations. It’s hard to imagine theft being justified in any way, even through art, which can be seen as an attempt to gain publicity,” the museum said in a statement, BBC reported.

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Bides’ supervisor, Israel prize-winning artist Michal Na’aman, took her student’s side, attributing her act of stealing to an effort to break barriers through art.

“Out of an understanding and appreciation of what she’s trying to do, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. On the other hand, I thought her effort to remove the barrier separating us from the initial aversion related to the events of World War II, for Jews specifically, is one of the things that art does sometimes,” she said.

Na’aman encouraged people to not view it as a theft but as an act by someone who was gathering “evidence” in order to hold on to an incident of immense significance in her life. She added that contrary to the official statement from the museum, Bides did not perform the act as a way to get publicity, fame or money.

According to BBC, this is not the first time that Holocaust items have been stolen from the museum. An Israeli local government official had tried to steal several items that were lying on the ground next to a display cabinet in 2011, but was caught at Krakow airport. Back in 2009, the "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work makes you free" in German) sign that hung over the entrance to Auschwitz was stolen but recovered shortly afterwards.