»Arbeit Macht Frei«

"Our work sets us free," shouted a high-ranking Nazi official to his so-called fellow countrymen in the midst of World War II. With this, he not only referred to the long tradition of "German work," which suggests that Germans have a very special relationship with labor. He also altered a widely known inscription from concentration camps. For "Work sets you free" was emblazoned at the gates of Auschwitz, Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and elsewhere. But what does this phrase actually mean? Whose work frees whom? And above all: from what? To answer these questions, Nikolas Lelle examines texts by Holocaust survivors Primo Levi, Jean Améry, and Tibor Wohl, each of whom wrote about the Nazi slogan "Work sets you free." The engagement with Nazi ideology and its "maxims" remains a challenge to this day. For how can it be that this phrase is both tabooed on one hand, while on the other, the extreme right constantly plays with it, and it devolves into a hashtag on social media platforms? Only a successful reckoning with the past can enable society to confront its history as well as its present.