"Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Brings Freedom) was the sign over the gates
of Auschwitz. It was placed there by Major Rudolf Hoss, commandant
of the camp.
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.
Friedrich, pp. 2-3.
