įrom Dachau it was copied by Rudolf Höss, who had previously worked there, when he was appointed to create the original camp at Auschwitz, which became known as Auschwitz (or Camp) 1 and whose intended purpose was to incarcerate Polish political detainees. The slogan's use was implemented by Schutzstaffel (SS) officer Theodor Eicke at Dachau concentration camp. The slogan was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps.

The slogan Arbeit macht frei was first used over the gate of a 'wild camp' in the city of Oranienburg, which was set up in an abandoned brewery in March 1933 (it was later rebuilt in 1936 as Sachsenhausen). They were held in a number of places in Germany. In 1933 the first communist prisoners were being rounded up for an indefinite period without charges. The phrase is also evocative of the medieval German principle of Stadtluft macht frei ('urban air makes you free'), according to which serfs were liberated after being a city resident for one year and one day. In 1922, the Deutsche Schulverein of Vienna, an ethnic nationalist 'protective' organization of Germans within Austria, printed membership stamps with the phrase Arbeit macht frei. The phrase was also used in French ( le travail rend libre!) by Auguste Forel, a Swiss entomologist, neuroanatomist and psychiatrist, in his Fourmis de la Suisse (English: Ants of Switzerland) (1920). The expression comes from the title of an 1873 novel by German philologist Lorenz Diefenbach, Arbeit macht frei: Erzählung von Lorenz Diefenbach, in which gamblers and fraudsters find the path to virtue through labour. The slogan is known for appearing on the entrance of Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. Arbeit macht frei ( ( listen)) is a German phrase meaning 'Work sets you free' or 'Work makes one free'.

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