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“ARBEIT MACHT FREI” TAKEN DOWN FROM THE GATE. INFAMOUS INSCRIPTION UNDERGOES CONSERVATION

Monday, 23 January 2006
http://en.auschwitz.org.pl/m/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=123&Itemid=8

After examining the condition of the original Arbeit macht frei gate, Museum preservation experts decided that it requires conservation. They identified superficial, isolated instances of damage resulting from chips in the layer of protective paint.
Preliminary macroscopic observation convinced them that the original inscription should be transported to a specialist preservation workshop and replaced by a faithful copy while the conservation measures are carried out.

The copy of the Arbeit macht frei inscription, made in the Museum’s workshops, was placed above the original gate several days ago. The use of the copy is necessary because the conservation work could last several months. The first stage of the work will be confined to the inscription. Other parts of the gate will be conserved in situ at a later time.

ARBEIT MACHT FREI – THE MAIN GATE OF AUSCHWITZ I

The main gate at Auschwitz I, the only camp gate at the time, was made on German orders by Polish political prisoners from one of the first transports, which arrived from Wiśnicz at the end of 1940 or the beginning of 1941. Its construction was associated with the changeover from the provisional camp perimeter fence, hung on wooden posts, to the permanent fence that featured electrified barbed wire hung on reinforced concrete posts.

We know that the inscription reading Arbeit macht frei was made by the metalworkers’ labor detail under the supervision of Jan Liwacz. These men, who labored in the camp smithy, deliberately turned the letter “B” upside down as a camouflaged act of disobedience.

The device was not confined to Auschwitz. The same “motto” loomed above the gates to concentration camps in Germany proper. Prisoner labor details, in rows of five, marched out through the gate to work each day under the eyes of their capos, who reported the number of prisoners in their details to the camp guards. They returned from work the same way, except that the rows of five were often out of order as the prisoners carried comrades who had given in to exhaustion, fallen ill, or been murdered.

The order of the marching labor details was also upset by continual searches, since the prisoners attempted to smuggle in food (potatoes, beets, onions, bread, etc.) they had obtained outside the fence. Dead bodies carried into the camp were laid out at the foot of the wall of Block no. 24. The numbers of prisoners in the returning labor details were scrupulously noted and had to agree with the numbers of prisoners who had left the camp in the morning. . . .

Władysław Niessner - Bramy b. Obozu KL Auschwitz [The gates at the site of the Auschwitz camp], part of a forthcoming collective volume in the Architecture of Crime series devoted to the camp fences. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum will publish the book in 2006.

Funds for Maintaining the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum

In organizational terms, the Museum is subordinated to the Polish ministry of culture and is funded by Poland. Only in the 1990s did international funding begin arriving for the preservation of certain objects.

In 1989, after visiting the site, the American Ronald S. Lauder set up an International Project for the Preservation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum as part of the foundation that bears his name. Foundation experts decided that $42 million was needed for Museum upkeep. The authors of the report assumed that these funds would come above all from the governments of countries whose citizens perished in Auschwitz.

Thanks to the Lauder Commission, aid from the German government and the German Laender and from other countries, associations, and foundations, including the French Shoah Remembrance Foundation, and donations from private individuals and fundraising drives, the Museum obtained additional resources for dozens of important preservation projects, as well as for commemorating the victims and explaining the site. Preservation projects included the central camp bath house, the so-called “Sauna,” at Birkenau, the camp fence, the commemoration of the site of the first Birkenau gas chamber, known as the “Little Red House,” and the railroad siding located between Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the so-called “Judenrampe,” where Jewish, Polish, and Roma deportees arrived at the camp.

CONSERVING THE COLLECTION AND MUSEUM PIECES

The Conservation Section protects and conserves all remaining post-camp items: buildings, camp ruins, objects of everyday use belonging to victims, camp paintings and graphics from during the war as well as contemporary works and a vast number of archived materials. In all there are more than 155 structures made of brick and wood, around 300 camp ruins and remains, including – of particular historical significance – the four gas chambers and crematoria in Birkenau, more than 13 km of fencing with 3,600 concrete posts, and a wide variety of additional items of equipment. In an area covering 191 hectares, there are many kilometres of hard-surface roads, drainage ditches, railway tracks with sidings and unloading ramps, two post-camp sewage-treatment plants, and fire service and water tanks. Furthermore, low-lying vegetation, historical and post-war wooded areas, and about 20 hectares of forest are protected and conserved on a permanent basis.