Arbeit macht frei is a German phrase meaning "Work sets you free." The slogan is known for appearing on the entrance of Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps.
Origin
The expression comes from the title of an 1873 novel by German philologistLorenz Diefenbach, Arbeit macht frei: Erzählung von Lorenz Diefenbach, in which gamblers and fraudsters find the path to virtue through labour. The phrase was also used in French by Auguste Forel, a Swiss entomologist, neuroanatomist and psychiatrist, in his Fourmis de la Suisse . In 1922, the Deutsche Schulverein of Vienna, an ethnic nationalist "protective" organization of Germans within the Austrian empire, printed membership stamps with the phrase Arbeit macht frei. It was later used in the Weimar Republic to promote its public works programs as a means to end unemployment. The phrase is also evocative of the medieval German principle of Stadtluft macht frei, according to which serfs were liberated after being a city resident for one year and one day.
The slogan Arbeit macht frei was placed at the entrances to a number of Naziconcentration camps. The slogan's use was implemented by SS officerTheodor Eicke at Dachau concentration camp and then copied by Rudolf Höss at Auschwitz. The slogan can still be seen at several sites, including over the entrance to Auschwitz I where the sign was erected by order of commandant Rudolf Höss. The Auschwitz I sign was made by prisoner-labourers including master blacksmithJan Liwacz, and features an upside-down B, which has been interpreted as an act of defiance by the prisoners who made it. An example of ridiculing the falsity of the slogan was a popular saying used among Auschwitz prisoners: Arbeit macht frei durch Krematorium Nummer drei In 1933 the first political prisoners were being rounded up for an indefinite period without charges. They were held in a number of places in Germany. The slogan was first used over the gate of a "wild camp" in the city ofOranienburg, which was set up in an abandoned brewery in March 1933. It can also be seen at the Dachau, Gross-Rosen, and Theresienstadt camps, as well as at Fort Breendonk in Belgium. It has been claimed that the slogan was placed over the entrance gates of the Monowitz camp. The slogan appeared at the Flossenbürgcamp on the left gate post at the camp entry. The original gate posts survive in another part of the camp, but the slogan sign no longer exists. Primo Levi describes seeing the words illuminated over a doorway at Monowitz. In 1938 the Austrian political cabaret writer Jura Soyfer and the composerHerbert Zipper, while prisoners at Dachau Concentration Camp, wrote the Dachaulied, or TheDachauSong. They had spent weeks marching in and out of the camp's gate to daily forced labour, and considered the motto Arbeit macht frei over the gate an insult. The song repeats the phrase cynically as a "lesson" taught by Dachau. In The Kingdom of Auschwitz, Otto Friedrich wrote about Rudolf Höss, regarding his decision to display the motto so prominently at the Auschwitz entrance: The signs are prominently displayed, and were seen by all prisoners and staff— all of whom knew, suspected, or quickly learned that prisoners confined there would likely only be freed by death. The signs' psychological impact was tremendous.
Thefts of signs
The Arbeit Macht Frei sign over the Auschwitz I gate was stolen in December 2009 and later recovered by authorities in three pieces. Anders Högström, a Swedish neo-Nazi, and two Polish men were jailed as a result. The original sign is now in storage at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and a replica was put over the gate in its place. On 2 November 2014, the sign over the Dachau gate was stolen. It was found on 28 November 2016 under a tarpaulin at a parking lot in Ytre Arna, a settlement north of Bergen, Norway's second-largest city.
