Posted on 08/30/2006 5:16:23 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
AN Italian politician has used the "work makes you free" slogan that topped the gates at Auschwitz in a brochure to promote local job centres, saying he could not remember the source but was impressed by the quote.
News agency Ansa reported the vice-president of the Jewish community in Rome had sharply criticised Tommaso Coletti, president of Italy's southern Chieti province and member of the centre-left “Daisy” party, for using the quote.
Countless photographs have focused on the “Arbeit macht Frei” sign at Auschwitz to encapsulate the horror of the Nazi death camps.
“Work makes you free. I don't remember where I read this phrase but it was one of those quotes that have an instant impact on you because they tell an immense truth,” Mr Coletti wrote in the pamphlet, Ansa reported.
Mr Coletti could not be reached for comment and the regional job centres were also unavailable. Ansa said the governor of the Abruzzo region, which includes Mr Coletti's province, had apologised to Italy's Jewish community.
“Daisy” party....ROFL! That would describe the cut & run DUmocrats!
Considering the servitude of welfare and the independence money gives you, it is true.
Of course, not in the sense the coiners of the phrase had in mind.
Arbeit kann Sie befreien lassen, aber Auschwitz machte Sie tot
Jawohl. :)
jedem das seine, as was posted on Buchenwald gate.
Idle hands are the work of the devil.
The phrase "Peace for our time" was spoken in 1938 by Neville Chamberlain in his speech given in the defense of the Munich Agreement, often misquoted as "Peace IN our time".
Chamberlain holding the paper containing the resolution to commit to peaceful methods signed by both Hitler and himself on his return from Germany in September 1938.
What a dope!
Work Makes you Free.
Hitler and company said many things - so any word or sentence they said can never be said again?
Knee-jerk (sounds like goose-stepping to me) reactions to non-events are the hallmark of the progressive socialists
It appears that Tommaso Coletti has some difficulty containing his excitement.
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Yes, he might be a dope, but "Work makes you free" is a very old saying. It comes from the late Middle Ages, and applied to a serf who ran away to a city. If he found enough work in the city to remain there for a year, then he was free of any duty to his landlord and was no longer a serf. Therefore, "Arbeit macht Frei".
Your post may be historically accurate, but it doesn't take away the fact that because of more recent history, the slogan "Arbeit macht frei" has become a contaminated saying, for the reasons that we all know about.
Yes, it's 60 years ago, but as long as there are still people that lived to tell the story, I'd say the use of the slogan can only take place in bad taste.
How soon they forget.
You know what impresses me? The fact that so many people have written how these camps are in remote areas, woodlands, and yet there are no birds that live on the compound. Erie silence and the sense of the gravity of death and horror.
Are we doomed to repeat history again? Have so many truly forgotten?
Simply chilling. I hope this is one politician that finds themselves unemployed following the next election.
History is repeating itself everyday. Has been since 1973.
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