'' is a German phrase meaning "Work sets you free" or "Work makes one 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 philologist 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 . In 1922, the of Vienna, an ethnic nationalist "protective" organization of Germans within the Austrian Empire, printed membership stamps with the phrase .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 was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. The slogan's use was implemented by SS officer Theodor 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 blacksmith Jan 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 thUse by the Nazis e gate of a "wild camp" in the city of Oranienburg, 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.
