Police search for museum arsonist

TERRE HAUTE -- Investigators Wednesday did not yet have any suspects in the fire that destroyed a museum founded by a Holocaust survivor but are treating it as an arson, a prosecutor said.\n"Basically our investigation right now is targeted toward who set the fire," Vigo County Prosecutor Bob Wright said.\nAll signs point to Tuesday's fire at the CANDLES Museum as arson, as evidence of an accelerant was found and a brick was thrown through a window, Wright said.\nSamples of the accelerant are being analyzed to determine the substance. Wright said he did not know when investigators would decide whether to officially declare the fire an act of arson.\n"That conclusion will be the easy part," Wright said. "The difficult part will be finding who set it."\nFire investigators are being assisted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Wright said Wednesday the FBI was not yet part of the investigation and would only become involved if the incident was labeled a hate crime.\n"That's certainly one of the aspects of the case that we are investigating," Wright said.\nThe museum was founded by Auschwitz survivor Eva Kor in 1995 in a one-story brick building along U.S. 41 south of the city's downtown. The fire caused the roof to collapse and destroyed much of the displays inside.\n"Remember Timmy McVeigh" was spraypainted on a wall near the building's entrance. McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber who shared sympathies with white supremacists, was executed at a federal prison outside Terre Haute in 2001.\nThe Anti-Defamation League is offering a $2,500 reward Tuesday for information leading to the conviction of the person or persons responsible.\nKor, who plans to rebuild, founded the CANDLES museum to house artifacts from Auschwitz and documents relating to Nazi doctor Josef Mengele.\nKor and an identical twin sister, Miriam Mozes Zeiger, were subjected to Mengele's genetic experiments at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. Her sister died of cancer in 1993.\nCANDLES stands for Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Experiments Survivors.