Polish police have detained five men for stealing the metal sign that hung over former Nazi death camp Auschwitz.
Police said the men were common thieves, not neo-Nazis.
Last Friday's theft triggered widespread outrage, especially from Israel and Jewish groups, amid fears of a political motive.
The sign, which carries the German motto ‘Arbeit macht frei’ (Work makes you free), is a powerful symbol of the Holocaust committed by the Nazis against the Jews. The police said it had been cut into three pieces.
‘None of the five suspects is a member of a neo-Nazi group,’ said Krakow district police chief Andrzej Rokita.
Authorities had made recovering the sign a national priority and the museum that runs Auschwitz offered a reward worth €27,000.
Police said they had received more than 100 calls offering information.
Some 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, perished at the death camp during Nazi Germany's occupation of Poland in WWII.
