Cilka’s last sight of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp would have been of the wrought-iron sign erected over the gates: ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ – Work Brings Freedom. The first thing she would have seen on her arrival in the Soviet Gulag camp at Vorkuta was another sign: ‘Work in the USSR is a matter of Honour and Glory.’ Another declared that ‘With an Iron Fist, We Will Lead Humanity to Happiness.’ A taste for sadistic irony was just one of the many traits that Nazi Germany and Stalin’s USSR shared.
