Vandals painted Nazi swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans at a memorial in the former Krakow-Plaszow concentration camp in Poland, the PAP news agency reported Saturday. The desecration came on the eve of a march commemorating the liquidation of Jews from Krakow's Jewish quarter during World War II. The police have launched an investigation, PAP said.

A Stockholm court Thursday allowed the extradition to Poland of Swedish former neo-Nazi leader Anders Hoegstroem to face trial for the theft of a sign from the one-time Auschwitz death camp, a prosecutor said.

Hungarian President Laszlo Solyom on Wednesday signed a law making Holocaust denial a crime punishable by up to three years in prison, his office said. The parliament had already passed a corresponding amendment to the current penal code last month, but it needed the president's signature to come into effect.

German Holocaust-denier Ernst Zuendel is to be freed from prison on March 1 after serving out his five-year sentence, prosecutors said on Wednesday. Zuendel, 69, was jailed for five years in 2007 for inciting racial hatred, having been extradited from Canada in 2005 where he had lived for decades. Two years spent behind bars before his trial were counted as part of his sentence.

A former Swedish neo-Nazi leader accused over the theft of the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign from the former Auschwitz death camp in Poland will be kept in custody until an extradition hearing, his lawyer said Friday after a court appearance. "The court found that he should stay in custody further on. The prosecutor said he must be in custody because there is a risk that he tries to leave the country," Bjoern Sandin said.

A former Swedish neo-Nazi leader arrested over the theft of the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign from the former Auschwitz death camp denies the charges against him, his lawyer said Friday. "His opinion is rather that he contributed to solving the issue. He has helped both Swedish and Polish police and Interpol with the investigation," Bjoern Sandin told the TT news agency.

Former Swedish neo-Nazi leader Anders Hoegstroem was arrested in Stockholm Thursday in connection with the theft of the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign from the former Auschwitz death camp, the case's prosecutor told AFP.

A group of survivors and descendants of victims of the Holocaust are suing the Hungarian state railroad company in US court for its role in transporting Jews to the Auschwitz death camp. The class action suit was filed Tuesday in a US district court in Chicago by attorneys representing the group of 95 plaintiffs.

French Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld on Monday urged Muslims and Jews to learn about their mutual suffering as a way to bring them closer, after a series of Holocaust conferences mostly in Arab states. "We must spread knowledge about works showing the common ties between Jews and Muslims, because Muslims also suffered from colonialism and humiliation," he said during a conference at the residence of France's ambassador to Baghdad.

Poland said Thursday it had formally asked Sweden for help in its probe of the theft of the infamous Nazi German "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign from the former Auschwitz death camp. "We sent the Swedish justice ministry a request for judicial assistance by mail and fax," prosecutor's office spokeswoman Boguslawa Marcinkowska told AFP.