The 'real' Auschwitz

Polish authorities are searching for the infamous 'Arbeit Macht Frei' sign, stolen from above the gates to Auschwitz in the early morning hours of December 18.  The theft, presumed to be an organized action by neo-Nazis, has been called 'an act of war' and a 'desecration'.  It is also a great irony, given the German government's recent pledge of 60m euros to help restore and preserve the decaying site, a state museum since 1947.  A cash reward has been offered for any information leading to the recovery of the sign, and both Polish and Jewish leaders have pleaded for the return of this universal symbol of death and defiance.

But what if the sign is never found?  What if the perpetrators destroy it?  For now, it has been replaced with a replica.  But in a BBC 'Viewpoint' piece, Rabbi Andrew Baker claims that 

There can be no copies or reproductions; visitors must see only what was real.  In that way they will bear witness to the very objects and structures which in turn remain the mute eyewitness to what happened there.  Perhaps that is what makes the theft of this sign so shocking and essentially irreplaceable. 

Baker makes a good point.  But to what extent can any historical site be preserved as a 'real' entity, unadorned by narrative and allowed to speak the facts for itself?  In truth, the passage of time and the centrality of the Holocaust in public consciousness means that visitors can never 'see only what was real'.  This is an ideal, but we inevitably fall short of it because we cannot hope to bring total objectivity to this site.  Instead, we bring preexisting knowledge and imagery.  As a result,  Auschwitz becomes as much representation as reality - much as memory is itself a construction rather than an historical fact in its own right.

This doesn't answer the question of what will happen - or indeed, what should happen - if the sign is never found.  And I certainly don't disagree with Baker that the sign is irreplaceable.  But I do wonder what exactly makes a piece of the past 'real' in the first place.