Two British teenagers arrested over Auschwitz theft

 

Two British teenagers have been arrested on suspicion of stealing artefacts from the former Auschwitz death camp, police in Krakow have said.

The unnamed pair were held by guards at the site, now a museum, on Monday and are in custody, police told AFP.
They took artefacts belonging to prisoners held there during World War Two, including buttons and pieces of glass, a museum spokesman told AFP.
The UK Foreign Office confirmed two British nationals had been arrested.
"We are in contact with the Polish authorities and stand ready to provide consular assistance," a spokeswoman said.
If found guilty the teenagers could face up to 10 years in prison, local police said.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum was founded in 1947 and has more than 80,000 British visitors each year.
In 2010, a Swedish man was jailed for plotting the theft of the "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work sets you free") sign from the entry gate of the Auschwitz site.
Auschwitz-Birkenau, located near the city of Krakow in southern Poland, was the largest camp established by the Germans during World War Two.
Some 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were killed there between 1940 and 1945, when Soviet troops liberated it.