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Arbeit Macht Frei
() is a German phrase translated as "Work makes one free" or, more idiomatically, "Work sets you free" or "Work liberates". The phrase originates from the title of an 1873 novel by Lorenz Diefenbach and alludes to John 8:31–32. Following the Nazi Party's rise to power in 1933, the phrase became a slogan used in programs implemented to combat mass unemployment in Germany. Today, it is primarily known for its use above the entrance of Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. Because prisoners were generally not released from the camps and performed forced labor under horrific conditions, the phrase has come to be understood as meaning that the only way for prisoners to gain a sort of freedom was to work until they died. Origin The expression comes from the title of an 1873 novel by the German philologist Lorenz Diefenbach, , in which gamblers and fraudsters find the path to virtue through labour. "The truth will set you free" () is a statement of Jesus found in J ...
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Dachau
Dachau (, ; , ; ) was one of the first concentration camps built by Nazi Germany and the longest-running one, opening on 22 March 1933. The camp was initially intended to intern Hitler's political opponents, which consisted of communists, social democrats, and other dissidents. It is located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory northeast of the medieval town of Dachau, about northwest of Munich in the state of Bavaria, in southern Germany. After its opening by Heinrich Himmler, its purpose was enlarged to include forced labor, and eventually, the imprisonment of Jews, Romani, Germans, and Austrians that the Nazi Party regarded as criminals, and, finally, foreign nationals from countries that Germany occupied or invaded. The Dachau camp system grew to include nearly 100 sub-camps, which were mostly work camps or , and were located throughout southern Germany and Austria. The main camp was liberated by U.S. forces on 29 April 1945. Prisoners lived in constant f ...
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Auguste Forel
Auguste-Henri Forel (; 1 September 1848 – 27 July 1931) was a Swiss myrmecologist, neuroanatomist, psychiatrist and former eugenicist, notable for his investigations into the structure of the human brain and that of ants. He is considered a co-founder of the neuron theory. Forel is also known for his early contributions to sexology and psychology. From 1978 until 2000 Forel's image appeared on the 1000 Swiss franc banknote. Early life Born in 1848 in a villa ''La Gracieuse'', at Morges, on Lake Geneva, Switzerland, to Victor Forel a pious Swiss Calvinist and Pauline Morin, a French Huguenot he was brought up in a protective household. Auguste Forel was born in 1848 at Morges on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. His great uncle, who was an entomologist, introduced Forel to insect natural history when he was young. After reading a book by Pierre Huber, he became interested in ants. Education He went to school at Morges and Lausanne. In 1866 he began his studies at the University o ...
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Blacksmith
A blacksmith is a metalsmith who creates objects primarily from wrought iron or steel, but sometimes from #Other metals, other metals, by forging the metal, using tools to hammer, bend, and cut (cf. tinsmith). Blacksmiths produce objects such as gates, grilles, railings, light fixtures, furniture, sculpture, tools, agricultural implements, decorative and religious items, cooking utensils, and weapons. There was a historical distinction between the heavy work of the blacksmith and the more delicate operations of a whitesmith, who usually worked in Goldsmith, gold, Silversmith, silver, pewter, or the finishing steps of fine steel. The place where a blacksmith works is variously called a smithy, a forge, or a blacksmith's shop. While there are many professions who work with metal, such as farriers, wheelwrights, and Armourer, armorers, in former times the blacksmith had a general knowledge of how to make and repair many things, from the most complex of weapons and armor to simple ...
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Laurence Rees
Laurence Rees (born 1957) is an English historian. He is a BAFTA winning historical documentary filmmaker and a British Book Award winning author of several books about Adolf Hitler, the Nazis and the atrocities committed, especially by them, during the 20th century. He is the former Head of BBC TV History Programmes. Biography Laurence Rees was educated at Solihull School and the University of Oxford. He joined BBC TV in 1978 as a research trainee and subsequently worked as a researcher and assistant producer in factual television between 1978 and 1983. He always wanted to make history documentaries and made his first film as a director and producer at the age of 25 in 1983 – a film portrait of Noël Coward for BBC1.Daniel Snowman, profile of Laurence Rees in ''Historians'', Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, p. 281. He started specializing in history films that related to the Nazis and the Second World War with his controversial programme ''A British Betrayal'' in 1991,
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Holocaust Victims
Nazi Germany discriminated against and persecuted people on the basis of their race or ethnicity (actual or perceived), religious affiliation, political beliefs, sexual orientation, and, where applicable, mental or physical disabilities. Discrimination did not simply exist in practice; it was institutionalized through legislation under the Nazi Party and perpetrated at an industrial scale, culminating in the Holocaust. Men, women, and children who were deemed mentally or physically unfit for society were subject to involuntary hospitalization, involuntary euthanasia, and forced sterilization. The vast majority of the Nazi regime's victims were Jewish, Romani, or Slavic. Jews, along with some Romani populations, were deemed unfit for society on racial or ethnic grounds and largely confined to ghettos, then rounded up and deported to concentration or extermination camps. The beginning of World War II marked a colossal escalation in the Nazis' efforts to eliminate "infer ...
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Auschwitz Concentration Camp
Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of #Auschwitz I, Auschwitz I, the main camp (''Stammlager'') in Oświęcim; #Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers, #Auschwitz III, Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a Arbeitslager, labour camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben, and List of subcamps of Auschwitz, dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of the Nazis' final solution, Final Solution to the Jewish question. After Germany Causes of World War II#Invasion of Poland, initiated World War II by Invasion of Poland, invading Poland in September 1939, the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into a prisoner-of-war camp. The initial transpo ...
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Rudolf Höss
Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss (also Höß, Hoeß, or Hoess; ; 25 November 1901 – 16 April 1947) was a German SS officer and the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. After the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II, he was convicted in Poland and executed for war crimes committed on the prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp and for his role in the Holocaust. Höss was the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz Concentration Camp (from 4 May 1940 to November 1943, and again from 8 May 1944 to 18 January 1945). He tested and implemented means to accelerate Hitler's order to systematically exterminate the Jewish population of Nazi-occupied Europe, known as the Final Solution. On the initiative of one of his subordinates, Karl Fritzsch, Höss introduced the pesticide Zyklon B to be used in gas chambers, where more than a million people were killed.Piper, Franciszek & Meyer, Fritjof"Overall analysis of the original sources and findings on deporta ...
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Dachau Concentration Camp
Dachau (, ; , ; ) was one of the first concentration camps built by Nazi Germany and the longest-running one, opening on 22 March 1933. The camp was initially intended to intern Hitler's political opponents, which consisted of communists, social democrats, and other dissidents. It is located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory northeast of the medieval town of Dachau, about northwest of Munich in the state of Bavaria, in southern Germany. After its opening by Heinrich Himmler, its purpose was enlarged to include forced labor, and eventually, the imprisonment of Jews, Romani, Germans, and Austrians that the Nazi Party regarded as criminals, and, finally, foreign nationals from countries that Germany occupied or invaded. The Dachau camp system grew to include nearly 100 sub-camps, which were mostly work camps or , and were located throughout southern Germany and Austria. The main camp was liberated by U.S. forces on 29 April 1945. Prisoners lived in constant f ...
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Theodor Eicke
Theodor Eicke (17 October 1892 – 26 February 1943) was both a senior SS functionary and a Waffen-SS divisional commander in Nazi Germany. He was a key figure in the development of Nazi concentration camps. Eicke served as the second commandant of the Dachau concentration camp from June 1933 to July 1934, and together with his adjutant Michael Lippert, was one of the executioners of SA Chief Ernst Röhm during the Night of the Long Knives purge of 1934. He continued to expand and develop the concentration camp system as the first Concentration Camps Inspector. In 1939, Eicke became commander of the SS Division Totenkopf of the Waffen-SS, leading the division during the Second World War on the Western and Eastern fronts. Eicke was killed on 26 February 1943, when his plane was shot down during the Third Battle of Kharkov. Early life and World War I Theodor Eicke was born on 17 October 1892, in Hampont (renamed ''Hudingen'' in 1915) near Château-Salins, then in ...
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Schutzstaffel
The ''Schutzstaffel'' (; ; SS; also stylised with SS runes as ''ᛋᛋ'') was a major paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II. It began with a small guard unit known as the ''Saal-Schutz'' ("Hall Security") made up of party volunteers to provide security for party meetings in Munich. In 1925, Heinrich Himmler joined the unit, which had by then been reformed and given its final name. Under his direction (1929–1945) it grew from a small paramilitary formation during the Weimar Republic to one of the most powerful organisations in Nazi Germany. From the time of the Nazi Party's rise to power until the regime's collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of security, mass surveillance, and state terrorism within Germany and German-occupied Europe. The two main constituent groups were the '' Allgemeine SS'' (General SS) and ''Waffen-SS'' (Armed SS). The ''Allgemeine ...
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Sachsenhausen (detention Camp)
Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners throughout World War II. Prominent prisoners included Joseph Stalin's oldest son, Yakov Dzhugashvili; assassin Herschel Grynszpan; Paul Reynaud, the penultimate prime minister of the French Third Republic; Francisco Largo Caballero, prime minister of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War; the wife and children of the crown prince of Bavaria; Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera; and several enemy soldiers and political dissidents. Sachsenhausen was a labour camp, outfitted with several subcamps, a gas chamber, and a medical experimentation area. Prisoners were treated inhumanely, fed inadequately, and killed openly. After World War II, when Oranienburg was in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the structure was used b ...
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Brewery
A brewery or brewing company is a business that makes and sells beer. The place at which beer is commercially made is either called a brewery or a beerhouse, where distinct sets of brewing equipment are called plant. The commercial brewing of beer has taken place since at least 2500 BC; in ancient Mesopotamia, brewers derived social sanction and divine protection from the goddess Ninkasi. Brewing was initially a cottage industry, with production taking place at home; by the ninth century, monasteries and farms would produce beer on a larger scale, selling the excess; and by the eleventh and twelfth centuries larger, dedicated breweries with eight to ten workers were being built. The diversity of size in breweries is matched by the diversity of processes, degrees of automation, and kinds of beer produced in breweries. A brewery is typically divided into distinct sections, with each section reserved for one part of the brewing process. History Beer may have been known in N ...
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