Detroit officials expressed all kinds of anger over the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign that was erected on an overpass of the mostly abandoned Packard factory, but it took an angry citizen to do the job of removing the offensive slogan.
The “dETROITfUNK.com” site wrote anonymously, “I went up with a hammer and tore the g-damn thing down” with the “help from a new friend who was there to do the same thing.”
An attorney who represents the owner of the plant said he wasn’t aware of the sign until contacted by the Detroit Free Press, but that he intended to remove it or cover it up,” according to the local Benji Unspun blog site.
“This is a disgusting act,” said Troy attorney John Bologna, who represents the plant’s owner Dominic Cristini. Cristini is in a legal dispute with the city over the plant’s ownership.
But the fact is nothing was done until someone took a hammer in hand and did the work.
The old Packard factory has become a symbol of the industrial decline in what used to be known as MotorCity. it is not known who erected the sign and if the intent was a remark on the city’s industrial woes or if it was aimed at Jews.
“I found it disturbing,” said David Schulman, 53, whose grandmother had family members killed in the Holocaust, Benji Unspun reported. His grandmother and her sister were the only two members in their family to survive the Nazis, he said.