The gate said "Arbiet Macht Frei" in an arc over it.
It was a lie. It should have said "Alles Macht Todt." Because the real purpose of the place beyond that gate was not to make people work. It was to make people die. Not in small, accidental numbers. Not in slow starvation (but that was done.) But it was to make people die in vast, industrial scale numbers. Not a hundred or so a day, but thousands. Tens of thousands. Originally located at Dachau, the signs would also come to be known at the Auschwitz complex of camps. The camps were a big fat German lie. The Germans told everyone, including themselves, that the people in the camps were just being held there to work. They were being held there to die. In the end, some six million Jews were consigned to places where they would either be immediately executed or slowly worked to death. Why ? simply because they were Jews. Juden. Untermenschen -- Sub-Human. Yes, that's right. They were considered to be less than human because of their religion and lifestyle. Let that sink in.Roughly 8 decades ago, people were herded into cattle cars at gunpoint -- packed in until there was only standing room. They were then transported to the camps. There, they would be sent in two directions. The minority were sent one way, the majority were sent to their deaths. They were told to strip off all their clothes, put all their personal belongings in a bag, and then step into the "shower room." There was no shower. Pellets of Zyklon B were dumped into the room by men on top of the gas chamber. People -- ordinary decent people -- were gassed to death in horrific numbers. Then the "Sonderkommando" -- work parties of prisoners -- would drag the bodies out of the gas chambers, load them on carts and then wheel the carts to the crematoria. When the crematoria were overloaded, they would take the bodies and burn them the hard way. Dante never conceived of a hell like this.
(note: Extermination camps killed more than Jews, but the Jews were the only ones targeted for death because of their religion. )
So I'm going to say it again, for all those who can't.
Never Again. Never forget what happened. Never allow it to happen again.
Don't let any modern-day Nazi, whether they call themselves "Nationalists" or "White Nationalists" or "White Separatists" fool you. Don't let them deny what happened.
