Arbeit macht frei.
One of history’s great lies, it was a sign across the main gate entering Auschwitz. It’s German, and it loosely translates as “work makes you free.”
Auschwitz was, of course, most horrific of the Nazi death camps, and more than 1.1 million people were murdered there between 1939 and 1945. More than 90 percent of them were Jews, and despite the lie about work and freedom, nearly 90 percent of the Jews were executed as soon as they arrived.
Even the few thousands who survived Auschwitz didn’t do it because they worked hard or learned valuable skills. They survived because the Nazis didn’t get around to killing them.
Why is this significant nearly 80 years later? Well, fascists and dominionists in Florida have taken to defending slavery. In establishing new educational standards for public schools in the state, they decided to include the “fact” that while slaves were indeed not free to leave, they were taught skills they could use for their own benefit later in life.
Nice, huh?
Mostly another lie. Any skills learned as slaves could only be used to benefit their masters. They couldn’t earn their freedom. It was the South’s defeat in the Civil War that freed the slaves.
Of course, even though that war ended more than 158 years ago, there are still people who want to pretend it never happened. And even if they admit that it did happen, they say they had nothing to do with it at all.
Which of course is exactly the stand Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is taking. He insisted that he wasn’t there and he wasn’t involved.
Chris Christie wasn’t about to let him get away with that.
“First of all, ‘I didn’t do it’ and ‘I’m not involved in it’ are not the words of leadership,” he said. “Governor DeSantis started this fire, with the bill that he signed. And now he doesn’t want to take responsibility for whatever is done in the aftermath of it. And from listening and watching his comments, he’s also uncomfortable.”
American conservatives hate the thought of feeling guilt for anything people who agree with them or who were related to them ever did. At least with some of them, it’s because they would have done the very same thing.
Conservatives definitely want a statute of limitations of guilt.
That’s why they were so shocked in 2019 when German Chancellor Angela Merkel accepted guilt at Auischwitz.
“This site obliges us to keep the memory alive. We must remember the crimes that were committed here and name them clearly,” Merkel said during a ceremony attended by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. “I feel deep shame given the barbaric crimes that were committed here by Germans.”
Merkel could never be a Republican.