Over the entrances to the Nazi concentration camps at Dachau, Gross-Rosen, Sachsenhausen, Theresienstadt and Auschwitz are three words: Arbeit macht frei – work sets you free. Adopted by the Nazis as a phrase extolling a belief in the purity and dignity of honest labour for the common good, the slogan was placed above the camps’ gates at the order of the SS.
At Dachau some 35,000 died in 12 years; in Gross-Rosen 40,000 in less than half that time. Sachsenshausen was not even intended as an extermination camp – though 100,000 died there between 1936 and 1945. Theresienstadt killed 33,000. At Auschwitz, the largest of the concentration camps, anything between 1.1 million and 4 million men, women and children were murdered. Their work did not set them free. The gates still stand to remind us.
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
This is the age of the slogan, the soundbite, the snappy phrase in place of considered argument. Thought is dying; reason’s gone critical. In bookshops and magazine racks we’re told only what we want to hear: we’re told it in neat, bullet-pointed affirmations of our own worth.
No more. This is the fightback. The resuscitation. This is the slogan as explainer of the world. One a day for a year. Three hundred and sixty five phrases, soundbites and bullet points with which to make sense of the way things are now and point to how things could be tomorrow. Read them and weep.
Defining the age through a slogan a day
This is the age of the slogan, the soundbite, the snappy phrase in place of considered argument. Thought is dying; reason’s gone critical. In bookshops and magazine racks we’re told only what we want to hear: we’re told it in neat, bullet-pointed affirmations of our own worth.
No more. This is the fightback. The resuscitation. This is the slogan as explainer of the world. One a day for a year. Three hundred and sixty five phrases, soundbites and bullet points with which to make sense of the way things are now and point to how things could be tomorrow. Read them and weep.
Posts
