A portion of the iron-wrought gate bearing the infamous Nazi slogan "Arbeit macht frei, " which stands for Work Sets You Free, was stolen from the former Dachau concentration camp, German police announced Sunday.

Security officials noticed the gate disappeared on Sunday morning. In a statement, the German police said they found no evidence in the immediate vicinity of the camp providing a lead to a possible suspect.

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Initial reports suggest that the offender would have stolen the gate, measuring 75 by 37 inches, which was set into a larger frame, during the night and would have climbed over another gate to reach it.

Authorities urged anyone who has noticed any suspicious people or vehicles to help with the investigation.

Dachau, which lies 16 kilometers northwest of Munich, is the first concentration camp the Nazis opened in March 1933.

The camp was originally set up for war and political prisoners. In 1960, it was closed down and subsequently converted into a Holocaust memorial.

For 12 years of operation, Dachau held about 200,000 Jews from across Europe, including German and Austrian criminals. About 40,000 of them died of forced starvation, hard labor and in gas chambers before the United States forces came on April 29, 1945 to liberate the prisoners.

Director of the Dachau Memorial, Gabriele Hammermann, condemned the theft of the death camp gate which she said is a key symbol of the prisoners' untold ordeal in the camp.

She said that officials earlier ruled out the installation of security cameras in the site as they disapproved of turning it into a "maximum-security unit," the Huffington Post quoted her as saying. In the light of the theft, a review of the earlier decision may be necessary, she said.

Yad Shavem, Israel's memorial and museum for the victims of the Holocaust, denounced the theft of the sign.

In a blog post, Yad Vashem said "the theft of such a symbolic object is an offensive attack on the memory of the Holocaust."

This is not the first case of stolen Nazi memorabilia.

In 2009, Swedish and Polish neo-Nazis stole a similar "Arbeit macht frei" sign that adorned the gate of the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp in Poland. It was found three days after, cut into several pieces, in a forest in the other side of the country after drawing worldwide condemnation.

TagsWorld War II, Nazi Germany, States of Germany, Arbeit macht frei, Dachau concentration camp, Holocaust victims, Signage