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 Honor 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.
