arbeit macht frei

{{For|the album|Arbeit macht frei (album){{!}}Arbeit macht frei (album)}}

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| caption1 = Slogan displayed at Dachau

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{{lang|de|Arbeit macht frei}} ({{IPA|de|ˈaʁbaɪt ˈmaxt ˈfʁaɪ||De-Arbeit macht frei.ogg}}) is a German phrase translated as "Work makes one free" or, more idiomatically, "Work sets you free" or "Work liberates".

The phrase originates from the title of an 1873 novel by Lorenz Diefenbach and alludes to John 8:31–32. Following the Nazi Party's rise to power in 1933, the phrase became a slogan used in programs implemented to combat mass unemployment in Germany.{{cite web | title=Arbeit macht frei | website=auschwitz.org | url=http://70.auschwitz.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=212&Itemid=179&lang=en | access-date=2024-03-24}}

Today, it is primarily known for its use above the entrance of Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps.Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Yad Vashem, 1990, vol. 4, p. 1751. Because prisoners were generally not released from the camps and performed forced labor under horrific conditions, the phrase has come to be understood as meaning that the only way for prisoners to gain a sort of freedom was to work until they died.{{Cite journal |title=Holocaust Business: Some Reflections on Arbeit Macht Frei |url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epdf/10.1177/000271628045000107 |access-date=2025-01-06 |journal=The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science |date=1980 |language=en |doi=10.1177/000271628045000107 |last1=Roth |first1=John K. |volume=450 |pages=68–82 |url-access=subscription }}

Origin

The expression comes from the title of an 1873 novel by the German philologist Lorenz Diefenbach, {{lang|de|Arbeit macht frei: Erzählung von Lorenz Diefenbach}}, in which gamblers and fraudsters find the path to virtue through labour.{{Cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/dec/18/auschwitz-arbeit-macht-frei-sign|title=Poland declares state of emergency after 'Arbeit Macht Frei' stolen from Auschwitz|last=Connolly|first=Kate|date=2009-12-18|website=The Guardian|language=en|access-date=2018-10-01}}{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_4tlbAAAAcAAJ|quote=diefenbach arbeit macht frei.|title=Arbeit macht frei: Erzählung von Lorenz Diefenbach|last=Diefenbach|first=Lorenz|date=1873|publisher=J. Kühtmann's Buchhandlung|language=de}} "The truth will set you free" ({{Lang|La|Vēritās līberābit vōs}}) is a statement of Jesus found in John 8:32—"And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" (KJV).

The phrase was also used in French ({{lang|fr|le travail rend libre!}}) by Auguste Forel, a Swiss entomologist, neuroanatomist and psychiatrist, in his {{lang|fr|Fourmis de la Suisse}} ({{langx|en|Ants of Switzerland|link=no}}) (1920).{{cite web |url=https://archive.org/stream/lesfourmisdelasu00fore#page/n7/mode/2up |title=Les fourmis de la Suisse (2nd Ed.) |first=Auguste |last=Forel |author-link=Auguste Forel|location=La Chaux-de-Fonds |publisher=Imprimarie cooperative |year=1920 |language=fr |access-date=22 November 2010}} In 1922, the {{lang|de|Deutsche Schulverein}} of Vienna, an ethnic nationalist "protective" organization of Germans within Austria, printed membership stamps with the phrase {{lang|de|Arbeit macht frei}}.{{cn|date=September 2022}}

The phrase is also evocative of the medieval German principle of {{lang|de|Stadtluft macht frei}} ("urban air makes you free"), according to which serfs were liberated after being a city resident for one year and one day.{{cite news |url=https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/stadtluft-macht-frei-sibler-bedauert-geweckte-assoziationen,RLkOSOe |language=de |title="Stadtluft macht frei": Minister bedauert Irritationen |date=26 March 2019 |access-date=8 August 2019 |archive-date=31 October 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191031125906/https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/stadtluft-macht-frei-sibler-bedauert-geweckte-assoziationen,RLkOSOe |url-status=dead }}

Use by the Nazis

In 1933, the first communist prisoners were being rounded up for an indefinite period without charges. They were held in a number of places in Germany. The slogan {{Lang|de|Arbeit macht frei}} was first used over the gate of the Oranienburg concentration camp,{{Cite book |last1=Bartrop |first1=Paul R. |title=The Holocaust: The Essential Reference Guide |last2=Grimm |first2=Eve E. |publisher=ABC-CLIO |year=2022 |isbn=978-1-4408-7778-0 |location=Santa Barbara |postscript={{pages needed|date=November 2024}}}} which was set up in an abandoned brewery in March 1933 (it was later rebuilt in 1936 as Sachsenhausen).{{cite web |date=2014 |title=Oranienburg Concentration Camp 1933–1934 |url=http://www.stiftung-bg.de/gums/en/index.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110720011243/http://www.stiftung-bg.de/gums/en/index.htm |archive-date=20 July 2011 |access-date=17 December 2014 |work=Memorial and Museum Sachsenhausen |publisher=Brandenburg Memorials Foundation |df=dmy-all}}

The slogan's use was part of the 1937-1938 reconstruction by {{lang|de|Schutzstaffel}} (SS) officer Theodor Eicke at Dachau concentration camp.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WOD9ncsixssC&pg=PA26 |title=Legacies of Dachau: The Uses and Abuses of a Concentration Camp, 1933-2001|last=Marcuse|first=Harold|date=2001-03-22|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=9780521552042|language=en}} From Dachau, it was copied by the Nazi officer Rudolf Höss, who had previously worked there. Höss was appointed to create the original camp at Auschwitz, which became known as Auschwitz (or Camp) 1 and whose intended purpose was to incarcerate Polish political detainees.{{Cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/auschwitz/40-45/beginnings/|title=Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State . Auschwitz 1940-1945 . Surprising Beginnings {{!}} PBS|website=www.pbs.org|access-date=2018-10-01}}Laurence Rees, Auschwitz: a New History

The Auschwitz I sign was made by prisoner-laborers including master blacksmith Jan Liwacz, and features an upside-down 'B', which has been interpreted as an act of defiance by the prisoners who made it.{{cite news|title=Auschwitz's sign of death and defiance|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8420681.stm|work=BBC News|access-date=23 April 2015}}{{cite web|title=B - the sculpture|url=http://www.auschwitz.info/en/b-the-sculpture.html| website=International Auschwitz Committee| access-date=23 April 2015}}{{Cite web|url=https://krakowdirect.com/arbeit-macht-frei-facts-auschwitz-gate/|title=Arbeit macht frei - facts about Auschwitz gate|date=2019-07-05|website=Krakow Direct|language=en-GB|access-date=2019-07-18}}

In The Kingdom of Auschwitz, Otto Friedrich wrote about Rudolf Höss, regarding his decision to display the motto so prominently at Auschwitz:

{{Blockquote|He seems not to have intended it as a mockery, nor even to have intended it literally, as a false promise that those who worked to exhaustion would eventually be released, but rather as a kind of mystical declaration that self-sacrifice in the form of endless labor does in itself bring a kind of spiritual freedom.{{cite book |last= Friedrich |first= Otto |title= The Kingdom of Auschwitz |publisher= Harper Perennial |date=August 1994 |isbn= 978-0-06-097640-8 |pages= 2–3}}}}

In 1938, the Austrian political cabaret writer Jura Soyfer and the composer Herbert Zipper, while prisoners at Dachau, wrote the {{lang|de|Dachaulied}} or "The Dachau Song". They had spent weeks marching in and out of the camp's gate to daily forced labour, and considered the motto {{Lang|De|Arbeit macht frei}} over the gate an insult.{{cite journal |last1=Zobl |first1=Wilhelm |last2=Zipper |first2=Herbert |title=ÜBER DIE ENTSTEHUNG DES DACHAU-LIEDS |journal=Österreichische Musikzeitschrift |date=December 1988 |volume=43 |issue=12 |page=666 |doi=10.7767/omz.1988.43.12.666 |s2cid=164058102 |url=https://doi.org/10.7767/omz.1988.43.12.666 |access-date=8 August 2022|url-access=subscription }} The song repeats the phrase cynically as a "lesson" taught by Dachau.

An example of ridiculing the slogan was a popular saying used among Auschwitz prisoners:

{{Verse translation|lang=de

|Arbeit macht frei

durch Krematorium Nummer drei.

|Work makes you free

Through crematorium number three.}}

It can also be seen at the Gross-Rosen and Theresienstadt camps, as well as at Fort Breendonk in Belgium. At the Monowitz camp (also known as Auschwitz III), the slogan was reportedly placed over the entrance gates.Denis Avey with Rob Broomby The Man who Broke into Auschwitz, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 2011 p.236Freddie Knoller with Robert Landaw Desperate Journey: Vienna-Paris-Auschwitz, Metro, London, 2002, {{ISBN|978-184-358028-7}} p.158 However, Primo Levi describes seeing the words illuminated over a doorway (as distinct from a gate).Levi, Primo, trans. Stuart Woolf, If This Is a Man. Abacus, London, 2004, p. 28. The slogan appeared at the Flossenbürg camp on the left gate post at the camp entry. The original gate posts survive in another part of the camp, but the sign no longer exists.KZ-Gedenkstaette Flossenbuerg

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 {{Lang|de|Arbeit macht frei}} signs

The {{Lang|de|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 five Polish men were jailed as a result.{{Cite news|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/former-neo-nazi-jailed-for-auschwitz-sign-theft-2172533.html|title=Former neo-Nazi jailed for Auschwitz sign theft|work=The Independent|access-date=2018-10-01|language=en-GB}} The original sign is now in storage at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and a replica was put over the gate in its place.{{cite news| url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12094855 | work=BBC News | title=Auschwitz sign theft: Swedish man jailed | date=30 December 2010}}

On 2 November 2014, the sign over the Dachau gate was stolen.{{cite news| url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29878278 | work=BBC News | title=Dachau infamous Nazi concentration camp gate stolen | date=3 November 2014}} It was found on 28 November 2016 under a tarp at a parking lot in Ytre Arna, a settlement north of Bergen, Norway's second-largest city.{{Cite web|url=http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/221193|title='No usable evidence' in investigation into stolen Dachau sign|website=Israel National News|date=4 December 2016 |language=en|access-date=2018-10-01}}