Polish police removed 300 crosses from a lot bordering the Auschwitz death camp yesterday, ending a year-long battle with Catholic nationalists.
The crosses – from crude, handmade ones to thick, varnished ones bearing inscribed plaques – had been erected in the past year.
They were upooted at dawn and taken to a nearby monastery.
Police did not remove a larger, 26-foot-high cross from a 1979 Mass celebrated by Pope John Paul II at the nearby Birkenau death camp that was moved to the Auschwitz site a decade ago to honor 152 Polish Catholics the Nazis killed there in 1941.
Jewish groups complained that the crosses insulted the memory of the one million Jews killed at Auschwitz and Birkenau.
Auschwitz is located in Oswiecin, a city 210 miles southwest of Warsaw. The crosses were removed from the site of a former Carmelite convent.
The removal was carried out “in a dignified and peaceful way with the help of priests,” a government statement said.