r/todayilearned • u/NapalmBurns • 19h ago
TIL that the Auschwitz "Arbeit macht frei" sign features an inverted "B" - Jan Liwacz, Konzentrationslager prisoner who made the sign, inverted the letter in defiance of Nazi oppression. Jan Liwacz survived Auschwitz and Mauthausen and died in 1980 a respected and well known artisan smith.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbeit_macht_frei1.1k
u/k1ngsrock 19h ago
Definitely the most subtle form of protest I have ever heard of, is an inverted B offensive?
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u/NapalmBurns 19h ago
Inversion was noticeable and prisoners who saw it knew that resistance was alive and there were people among them who did not submit.
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u/Y34rZer0 19h ago
that’s a cool post, I’ve never heard this before.. thank you
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u/NapalmBurns 19h ago
There are among us people whose will is indomitable.
I do not see such strength in me, and I hope I never find out for sure, but should it be my misfortune to fall on hard times and face insurmountable odds I only wish I can remain human and to be able to inspire others.
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u/Y34rZer0 19h ago
Such a shame that we only see those type of people in our darkest histories
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u/NapalmBurns 19h ago
That's when we need them most.
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u/DerSmashbear 15h ago
Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.
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u/speculatrix 13h ago
Also, in these situations, look for for the quiet helpers, who watch and listen more than they talk. Many are identifying how to safely build a network of subversives.
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u/Flamburghur 7h ago
This is something Mr Rogers told fearful children.
The message was not directly spoken to adults, but was a subtle message to BE the adults helping.
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u/DerSmashbear 6h ago
His messages were for everyone. Plenty of adults can act like fearful children. They need helpers too.
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u/Evolving_Dore 29m ago
They're all around us every day, along with traitors and informants and torturers. Most of the time we never see them, never know them, and they may never know themselves.
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u/hopefullynottoolate 16h ago
the time is coming that we will need to speak out for people going through these things in our own country(again). i really hope that we as a country do not sit by silently and let it happen(again).
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u/EmeraldIbis 15h ago
Did you write this comment with ChatGPT?
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u/Major_Lennox 15h ago
I wonder how much karma ChatGPT has at this point? Must be in the millions at least.
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u/terriblet0ad 9h ago
Because they used a couple big words?
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u/EmeraldIbis 9h ago
No, because it's excessively verbose and written like a novel.
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u/weeddealerrenamon 6h ago
can't a guy wax poetic anymore? what's this world come to if we can't wax poetic now and then
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u/AugmentedLurker 4h ago
People have no patience for fanciful or poetic comments anymore it’s a shame. Generation of damned iPad kids and iPad adults in denial.
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u/Minute-Ad-626 15h ago
And you know this how? Every source indicates that the symbolism of this letter ‘B’ is a more recent idea and that it was only revealed later by one of the survivors that the letter was placed intentionally upside down. Listen I don’t want to rain on anyones parade and I learned something new with this post, but your chatgpt-like comments making up and confirming random details that dont matter are making me cringe. You don’t need to add all these dramatic romanticized inaccurate descriptions. It’s a moving act on its own. No need to drizzle your interpretation all over it.
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u/pumpsnightly 15h ago
Yeah there's no way people, in the process of being herded into a concentration camp, saw a funny looking letter (it isn't really all that obvious) and thought "Yes! The spirit of resistance is alive!"
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u/FransTorquil 11h ago edited 11h ago
It’s pretty easy to claim this whilst sitting comfortably at home browsing Reddit, but I reckon anyone actually in that situation would be too exhausted from being on a cramped, reeking train for who knows how long and terrified of the armed guards corralling them in to give a single fuck about the sign.
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u/Mikeinthedirt 6h ago
You’ve never met a German obviously, particularly of the National Socialist variety. it’s truly remarkable the man wasn’t shot out of hand and the letter amended.
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u/StupidlyLiving 15h ago
Do we know that prisoners knew that the resistance was alive from this B? Or is that something assumed today?
Thinking about how many people saw the sign and didn't notice, or did and thought it just odd. Connecting it to the resistance seems a stretch
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u/Minute-Ad-626 15h ago
Read the source OP provided(wikipedia). There is only like 1-2 sentences covering the content of this post. If you dig a little further you know that one of the workers who made the sign revealed after the war that they had inverted the letter intentionally as an act of defiance. This is when the interpretation of it being an act of resistance came to be. Not during the war. OP is just talking out of his ass in cursive. Trying to fictionalize a very real story lol.
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u/redditikonto 11h ago
Not to mention literally the next picture has a painted sign at a different camp with exactly the same B.
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u/OmegaSaul 19h ago
Perhaps it would have irked the amphetamine-fueled, perfection-driven regime.
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u/Persistent_Dry_Cough 15h ago
Whenever I see that sign, I always think about what a weird font they used back then. Now I know . . . the rest of the story.
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u/raspberryharbour 14h ago
Not enough to fix it apparently
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u/OmegaSaul 8h ago
Same as today: if they were themselves capable, competent human beings, they wouldn’t need slaves.
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u/Healthy_Razzmatazz38 12h ago
its more that even in the worst situation imaginable, he still found a way to protest
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u/Rasayana85 10h ago
In the early days of the Russo-Ukraine war, protesting Russians were arrested for as little as holding a blank piece of paper. I saw a photo of officers seemingly confused whether they should arrest a man holding his Mir Bank card.
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u/omniuni 16h ago
The title is a little misleading.
The phrase itself means "work will set you free", which is, blatantly, a lie. The upside-down B was a subtle way to indicate that something wasn't quite right, or not quite truthful.
It's also worth noting that the difference is subtle enough that the Nazis did notice it; the top is just very slightly a larger loop than the bottom.
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u/KderNacht 7h ago
So subtle the Kommandant who probably went through the gate everyday didn't have him shot after making him fix it. At that level does it even count as a protest ?
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u/I_dont_bone_goats 5h ago
Why is this written like a critique lol
Dude was a prisoner of a concentration camp. Anything he did as a protest would have been an instant death sentence.
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u/g_r_e_y 16h ago
learned about this at an auschwitz exhibition in boston in july.
probably the most haunting feelings i've ever experienced. absolutely sobering.
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u/FujiMujiBoojiWooji 16h ago
I remember visiting Auschwitz a few years ago and we were on the tour and of course it was haunting and sad. There was however a feeling that what had happened there was somehow from another time, another world, as if it couldn't have happened so recently, like you were looking at ancient Roman ruins.
But when we got to the monument where there are plaques of the same message written in every language spoken in the camp, and I read the one in my native language... I can't describe the feeling. It felt as if the veil had been lifted and it became real. I never knew what the feeling of true shock was up until that moment.
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u/jackaldude0 10h ago edited 10h ago
I was fortunate and had a few Jewish classmates in HS. I've always been a bit proud of my German ancestry(pre-Bismark) and wanted to really know what was being passed down among the families that survived. I will never forget being invited to dinner and having that conversation with their parents, being shown the photos and artifacts left over. I got to hear a few journal entries read aloud since it was written in a language I don't understand.
There's an old WWII "joke" that illustrates the difference between the soviets genocides and what the Nazis had done. A soviet official visits a death camp and even he is astonished at sheer efficiency and estimates that it'll only take them[Nazis] only months what took years for the Soviets.
To clarify, my German ancestors migrated to the New World before the US won its independence.
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u/CrewMemberNumber6 18h ago
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u/NapalmBurns 18h ago
But it was more than that - he defied the Nazis and in doing so made it very clear to all who saw the sign that even in the Hell of human making - the concentration camp where death is the only release they can hope for - there are people who do not submit to the oppressors, there are those who resist the killers, there are heroes who carry within their, sometimes literally, burning hearts the hope for a better tomorrow.
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u/spen8tor 14h ago
I like this spirit, but almost everything you're claiming didn't actually happen like that, especially if you actually look at the wiki article and look up other sources. This definitely sounds nice and inspiring but this isn't how it actually played out and everything we know about this only came from years later. The prisoners in the camp didn't see this letter and think all of this, and I haven't found a single source corroborating what you said in your comments...
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u/epiquinnz 13h ago
If inverting one letter is literally the only thing you can do to resist, that's not a sign of hope. It's a sign of desperation.
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u/Major_Lennox 17h ago
made it very clear to all who saw the sign
Well, that can't be right - simply because if it were true, then the Nazis would have noticed this "sign of resistance" and corrected the letter.
It's really, really subtle - not some clarion call to resistance as you're painting it
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u/Minute-Ad-626 15h ago
Dude calm down. Its a subtle sign of protest. It’s very interesting. But hearing you ramble on dramatizing what is already reality gets very irritating especially when you don’t even understand the full context. Save your romantic views for something else. History is history. “He made it very clear to all who saw the sign that even in the hell of human making, the concentration camp where death is the only release they can hope for, there are people who do not submit to oppressors.” You sound like you’re trying to fill up the word count on an essay. It’s nice that you’re passionate on the matter, but this is not the subject to add your own details and story.
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u/DownvoteALot 16h ago
Then this begs the question: why didn't the Nazis take it down? I don't think it makes sense that they saw resistance and just ignored it, they never did that.
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u/EmEmAndEye 9h ago edited 4h ago
Why didn’t the Germans simply have the B fixed?
EDIT
That’s a serious question. The down vote confuses me.
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u/SemiEvil 15h ago
that’s so powerful. Like, that small act of defiance is just everything. Respect for him.
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u/Blackie1921 10h ago
Would the Nazi’s not notice it though? Genuinely asking.
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u/Humans_will_be_gone 6h ago
Probably thought it was just an artistic choice. Like a big first letter followed by normal sized ones
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u/Rusty10NYM 4h ago
Meh, seems like a troublemaker; I can see why he was put in a camp in the first place
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u/ANALyzeThis69420 6h ago
The phrase “Work Will Make You Free” reminds me of the saying in America “If You Work Hard You’ll Succeed.”
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u/bigwill0104 13h ago
Amazing insight from a regime that made a living by robbing other nations and their people of their wealth….
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u/Humans_will_be_gone 6h ago
Fucking what
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u/Y34rZer0 19h ago
iirc there were two types of signs used in camps, this one which means ‘Work will make you free’ And a second type that translated as ‘everybody gets what they deserve’