Holocaust survivors and Jewish educators were aghast upon hearing Friday of the theft of the Nazis' infamous iron sign over the entrance of Auschwitz, in Poland.

Those entering the still-standing death camp saw above their heads the 5-meter-long message "Arbeit Macht Frei" - German for "Work Sets You Free".

For Peninah Zilberman, a Holocaust educator, the news hit personally.

"My mother and my family walked through there [during the Holocaust], as well, myself with many groups of students and survivors. It hits me and hurts me. With deniers or anti-Semites, it's reached that point when we ask: what's next? That is my basic concern."

Ms Zilberman, who teaches Hebrew at CHAT Thornhill high school, said that five of her mother's brothers, as well as about 70 extended family members perished in the Holocaust.

Yaron Ashkenazi, the executive director of Canadian Society for Yad Vashem - a branch of the Israel-based headquarters which is the world's leading Holocaust educational centre - said that the crime affects the Jewish community of both the past and present.

"This act is insulting to the entire Jewish nation. It is a direct attack on the memory of the six million who were systematically murdered by the Nazi's hateful regime and a vicious slap to those who survived," said Mr. Ashkenazi.

Thornhill resident and Holocaust survivor Helen Yermus said she was lost for words.

"I was shocked. I don't know what use anyone would have for it. Was it just malicious? It's a deliberate downgrading of the Holocaust. It was meant to hurt the people who survived and the people who are still mourning."

Mrs. Yermus spent four months at Stutthoff concentration camp and was later moved to a slave labour camp where she and 1,500 other women dug graves.

More than a million people, mostly Jews, were murdered during the Holocaust at the Auschwitz death camp.