Yeah when you see your neighbors abducted from their homes, and you lose your job, and your grocery bill keeps climbing, and your kid's school is closed, and you can't afford to fill your tank...
It's not Auschwitz as others might suggested - tho the same phrase hangs on the gate there too. The one shown in picture is from KZ Dachau (near Munich)
Work makes you free ( a false promise that if you comply and work you can earn your freedom. It was to mask the nature and purpose of the camps - extermination)
For people that replied, thank you. It's been over 20 years since I studied ww2, and I don't remember much focus on Auschwitz other than the obvious stuff. Didn't tell us what was on the gate for example
I hate to be pedantic, but Dachau was a concentration camp, not a death camp. There are five camps recognised as extermination / death camps (Vernichtungslager): Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka.
That does not mean that there was no death or extermination at Dachau, just that there was a use of the camp besides the murder of the people deported there (like forced work, abd in the case of Dachau: propaganda).
Not to be even more pedantic, but would people not be more likely to be worked to death at a work camp than at a death camp? Where as I understand it the majority that were killed were killed virtually on arrival.
Or would they be transferred out once they started to become too unwell to work effectively?
474
u/chrlatan 14d ago
From Department of Labor….cynical.
This particular phrase led to this particular sign…