Yeah, I probably didn’t express that well. I didn’t mean work like, well, most of our jobs. I meant more like the things that are inherently virtuous (for whatever value of virtue) but difficult.
This is probably one of those things where the more you have to explain it, the less it needed to be said in the first place.
This would be the holy grail for neo-nazi turds. That’s why someone stole it. It’s not a statement of rejection IMO as most jews think these places should stand as monuments to what we can never let happen again to any group.
Also, if I thought I could get away with it, I’d totally steal a recognisable piece of art I liked. Imagine just sitting blazing a doob admiring your Dali.
While I suspect Shuck is right (the Auschwitz sign was stolen by neo-nazis.), people steal (or knowingly purchase) stolen art because they want to have it. It’s a power thing.
Good God, thirty five years ago, on a languid July afternoon, I walked under that sign. I can still hear the crunch of gravel under my feet. With my limited German, I knew exactly what it meant. That sort of thing fucks with your head. How could anyone, anywhere, want such a symbol of horror?
Someone had better check Harlan Crowe, wealthy GOP donor and Dallas real estate billionaire He has a statue garden of famous dictators, some watercolors by Hitler, and an autographed copy of Mein Kampf.
Who’d want it? More than one Republican, that’s for sure.
Okay. I thought something similar had happened before
I do feel a little dirty liking this. I love the font, love how it “survived”, do not like the context.
Lot’s of cognitive-emotional dissonance bouncing around in here…
The director of the German collection at the British Museum has been running a history programme on the radio here this week, and Buchenwald was the topic on Tuesday. They found the guy (inmate) who was tasked with making and re-painting the sign and interviewed him, who said he chose that style as a “f$ck you” to his captors
i’m glad they found it. i worry these are being stolen to hang in some neo-nazi’s living room as a trophy or something. ugh.
As we speak, somebody is hammering the letters so they will now read Eigentlich geht es um Ethik in Videospiel-Nachrichten.
I’ll supply a link like an article I read that said the some of the most valuable artwork in the world is in private hands and not on display, even in the homes of the owners. Too big a risk for theft. I have no problem seeing the gate go down the same rabbit hole of the artwork stolen and sold out of every country that got looted in the midst of war. Then there are the hundreds of archeological sites stripped, graves robbed … where ever and how ever a buck can be made, the black market has always existed for illicit goodies, and those items were never seen again. In fact, aren’t there still Jewish families trying to track down artwork stolen from them during WWII?
http://www.theartwolf.com/articles/most-valuable-private-art.htm
Be so kind as to <a href=https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ptOCAuEHRqu3jCpE7ThBwHdl1CfEHcevDnVz_abTxvg/edit?pli=1>add your moniker to the list of the disappointed.
Primo Levi (RIP) tells a similar story about working in the camp “clinic” in Moments of repreive, and is most highly recommended.
I am not so sure about that. Because of a the combination of size and, for an extermination camp, comparatively many survivors Auschwitz gets a lot of exposure, but the Dachau sign still is the original.
It might also be a cultural difference. As the first concentration camp, Dachau is associated more with real or perceived political opponents rather than Jews. That just doesn’t receive the same attention as part of e.g. the American popular narrative of the Third Reich.
Just a note that here in Munich (the city that Dachau is a suburb of), the papers are all leading with this, so it is a big deal here. The Germans are pretty upset about it, assuming it was neo-nazi punks that did it. I have seen the gates from the outside, but although I have been living in Munich since 2010 to my shame I admit I haven’t visited the Gedenkstätte yet.
And Karl is correct in one sense, that Dachau was not explicitly an extermination camp – those the Nazis thought they could make and erase without a trace – but it was the prototype camp, used first for socialists and social democrats, union members, as well as any other undesirables. It still had a horrific death toll, as prisoners were worked to death.
I thought the first sign was stolen for scrap… I could be remembering wrong.
Went there a few years back and felt like hit points were being drained even though I wasn’t taking any physical damage. What a place. Here’s a somewhat crappy shot of the gate–doesn’t look like it’s particularly secured, although it’s not something that should require extraordinary security efforts:
That’s a perfect way of putting it. I visited Sachenhausen about 8 years ago and had to end that day in a cloud of cigarette smoke and vodka.
