This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen is a collection of short stories that portrays the brutality and indifference of concentration camps that was published in 1946 and written by the Holocaust survivor Tadeusz Borowski, a key figure of Polish literature. Powerful, unnerving, disturbing, and heartbreaking, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen is a wholly worthwhile book to read and ponder.
Tadeusz Borowski was born in 1922 and died on July 1, 1951 at the age of twenty-nine by opening a gas valve in Warsaw to end his own life. Borowski, as stated before, was a victim of the Nazis: he was imprisoned in Auschwitz and Dachau from 1943 to 1945. As a renowned literary figure, he published a multitude of poems and short stories that are still relevant today. When it comes to what the book is about, it can be aptly summarized in its introduction that was written by Jan Kott: “The book is one of the cruelest of testimonies to what men did to men, and a pitiless verdict that anything can be done to a human being.” (12). The stories contained in the book are notable in how they can be interpreted as discussing human history up to that point in time, seeing how some authors who produced similar works either quit writing, became insane, or ended their lives like Borowski himself. Borowski was arrested by the Nazis along with his fiancée. During his stay in Auschwitz, he was able to sometimes see her, though their health were both terrible, as he once became extremely ill and suffered from exhaustion, which all the prisoners of Auschwitz experienced. As for her, her head, hearkening to the rules of Auschwitz, was shaved and her entire body was covered with scabies. The introduction provides more of Borowski’s time at Auschwitz: “He was sent to the women’s camp to pick up infant corpses … Late in the spring of 1944 he was assigned to a brigade of roofers working in the F.K.L. From then on he saw his fiancée every day. At Auschwitz this was the most dreadful time. The Soviet offensive was approaching, and the Germans stepped up the liquidation of the Jews from the occupied lands. In May and June of 1944 more than four hundred thousand Jews from Hungary were gassed and burned. In the summer of 1944 the inmates of Auschwitz began to be evacuated into the heart of Germany. Borowski found himself first in a camp outside Stuttgart, then in Dachau. On May 1, 1945, that camp was liberated by the U.S. Seventh Army … they left the camp in September” (16). Although the Nazi regime was finished after WWII, the Stalinist regime wasted no time in seizing for itself much of the land the Nazis dominated to transform them into puppet states. Borowski went in search of his fiancée, and found her in Sweden and married her in December. He was a supporter of the Communist regime, and persuaded her to go back with him to Poland, which belonged to the Russians at the time. He became a member of the Communist party in 1948, and his stories were quite controversial, as the Communist authorities wished for stories that showed the concentration camps as products of Fascism and for Communism to be portrayed as a glorious ideology that opposed it. Staying true to its totalitarian nature, the Polish Communist regime gave Borowski a government prize for his worst pieces of writing (he catered to the opinions of the Communist regime). After going to Berlin to work in the Press Section of the Polish Military Mission, he committed suicide. “The reasons for suicide are always complex, and Borowski took the mystery of his death with him to the grave. Two attempts at suicide had preceded that final turning on of the gas valve, but at the conclusion of this life history, which is an emblem and a model of the ‘fate’ of Europe, the plot thickens, the threads all tangle, as though spun by the Greek Moirai—the relentless daughters of Inevitability. After his return from Berlin Borowski entered into a liaison with a young girl. Three days before the suicide his wife bore him a daughter. He saw his wife for the last time at the hospital, on the afternoon before the night he killed himself … there is a second thread. A couple of weeks before the suicide an old friend was arrested … his friend was [previously] tortured by the Gestapo; now he was tortured in turn by Polish Security. Borowski interceded with the highest party officials and was told that the people’s justice was never mistaken. This was after the denunciation of Tito by Stalin, and the Communists were then hunting down ‘traitors’ with ‘rightist-nationalistic deviations.’ Borowski never lived to see his friend’s trial. And there is a third thread. When Borowski left for Berlin, he was entrusted with a special mission, ‘the kind you don’t even tell your wife about’—wrote Borowski’s closest friend a few years after his death … such missions were accepted more than once by writers and professors, experts on human conscience. The only difference was that in the West ‘special’ missions usually ended with one returning home.” (20-1). Whatever the reason for Borowski’s suicide, not only Polish but world literature lost a promising figure, though people should be grateful for whatever works he had produced before his demise.
The stories included in This Way for the Gas are the following: “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen,” “A Day at Harmenz, “The People Who Walked On,” “Auschwitz, Our Home (A Letter),” “The Death of Schillinger,” “The Man With the Package,” “The Supper,” “A True Story,” “Silence,” “The January Offensive,” “A Visit,” and “The World of Stone.” All these stories are honest and therefore potentially extremely difficult to read due to how they excellently portrayed the stark reality of violence and inhumanity in the concentration camps. This is further compounded by the graphic yet historically accurate imagery that Borowski employs to demonstrate the barbarity of which humans are capable. One of the chief instances of this in the book appears in the story the book is named after. That is, the first story involves a worker in “Canada,” an area in Auschwitz that involves jobs that are easier than the regular backbreaking labor, though still horrific in their own right. The protagonist’s job is to deceive the countless prisoners into thinking they are going to be given decent treatment as well as forcing them to comply if they resist and to organize their belongings, which are going to be used to fund the Nazi war effort. The atmosphere of the story is utterly compelling, and some of Borowski’s imagery can be noted in the following instance: “The morbid procession streams on and on—trucks growl like mad dogs. I shut my eyes tight, but I can still see corpses dragged from the train, trampled infants, cripples piled on top of the dead, wave after wave … freight cars roll in, the heaps of clothing, suitcases and bundles grow, people climb out, look at the sun, take a few breaths, beg for water, get into the trucks, drive away. And again freight cars roll in, again people … There is a humming inside my head; I feel that I must vomit.” (41). In a prior instance, the narrator was ordered by the SS to clean the inside of the transports the prisoners were imprisoned in while being brought to the camp: in heartrending language, it is detailed that “In the corners amid human excrement and abandoned wrist-watches lie squashed, trampled infants, naked little monsters with enormous heads and bloated bellies. We carry them out like chickens, holding several in each hand.” (39). Borowski in his writing takes care to demonstrate how organized the Holocaust was, as the Nazis were obsessed with keeping records to ensure that all their victims were accounted for: “Near by stands a young, cleanshaven ‘gentleman’, an S.S. officer with a notebook in his hand. For each departing truck he enters a mark; sixteen gone means one thousand people, more or less. The gentleman is calm, precise. No truck can leave without a signal from him, or a mark in his notebook … The marks swell into thousands, the thousands into whole transports, which afterwards we shall simply call ‘from Salonica’, ‘from Strasbourg’, ‘from Rotterdam’. This one will be called ‘Sosnowiec-Będzin’.” (39). The story continues to unfailingly show the inhumanity of which humankind is capable of, as seen in the following sentences: “Only from this distance does one have a full view of the inferno on the teeming ramp. I see a pair of human beings who have fallen … The man has dug his fingers into the woman’s flesh and has caught her clothing with his teeth. She screams hysterically … until at last a large boot comes down over her throat and she is silent. They are pulled apart and dragged like cattle to the truck. I see four Canada men lugging a corpse: a huge, swollen female corpse … they kick out of their way some stray children who have been running all over the ramp, howling like dogs. The men pick them up by the collars, heads, arms, and toss them inside the trucks on top of the heaps … Big, swollen, puffed-up corpses are being collected from all over the ramp; on top of them are piled the invalids, the smothered, the sick, the unconscious. The heap seethes, howls, groans … Several … men are carrying a small girl with only one leg … Tears are running down her face and she whispers faintly: ‘Sir, it hurts, it hurts …’ They throw her on the truck on top of the corpses. She will burn alive along with them.” (45-6). By the end of the story, the narrator is emotionally devastated, though he is still functional. He informs a fellow prisoner that he cannot possibly handle another transport. The prisoner responds by telling him that he has much more experience than him: he handled at least a million people, some of which were his friends. To elaborate, he says he despises transports from Paris, as they include some of his acquaintances. With no choice, he tells them that they are going to get a bath, as he wishes to make the process easier for them. Another transport then came. When those on it disembarked, one of them was a little girl who had lost her mind due to the cramped conditions. She then “began walking around in a circle, faster and faster, waving her rigid arms in the air, breathing loudly and spasmodically, whining in a faint voice … The whining is hard on the nerves: an S.S. man approaches calmly, his heavy boot strikes between her shoulders … Holding her down with his foot, he draws his revolver, fires once, then again. She remains face down, kicking the gravel with her feet, until she stiffens. They proceed to unseal the train … A warm, sickening smell gushes from inside. The mountain of people filling the car almost halfway up to the ceiling is motionless, horribly tangled, but still steaming.” (47-8). The story ends with the narrator noting that Sosnowiec-Będzin was a “good” transport due to all the valuables and food the victims had on them. Borowski notes the contradiction of the S.S.: they’re quite educated, yet they’re mass murderers. He puts it himself, “The S.S. men’s black figures move about, dignified, businesslike. The gentleman with the notebook puts down his final marks, rounds out the figures: fifteen thousand.” (49). The story ends with the narrator’s realization that those from Sosnowiec-Będzin had already been executed, as indicated by the smoke coming from the crematoria.
While “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen” is a prime example of the quality of Borowski’s writings, the other stories are vivid as well. In “A Day at Harmenz,” Borowski is able to get rid of the somewhat romanticized picture of what a concentration camp may seem like to those unacquainted with it. That is, in places as extreme as Auschwitz, the difference between executioner and victim can be quite small, seeing the hierarchy and the privileges associated with various positions. In “A Day at Harmenz,” Borowski demonstrates that the Kapo (senior prisoner) possesses a large degree of power due to being able to decide who gets second portions of soup. Borowski writes, “Each day the Kapo relishes this particular moment. The many years he spent at the camp entitle him to the absolute power he has over the men. With the end of his ladle he points out the chosen few who merit a second helping. He never makes a mistake. The second helping is for those who work better, for the stronger, the healthier. The sick, the weaklings, the emaciated, have no right to an extra bowl of water with nettles. Food must not be wasted on people who are about to go to the gas chamber.” (69-70). The end of the story demonstrates the concept of human limits: in Nazi concentration camps, a “Muslim” is someone who has been utterly stripped of the will to work and live due to the horrific conditions they found themselves in. Becker, a “Muslim,” asked the narrator for some food, as he has been hungry for so long that he wishes for some nourishment before being gassed. When he made his request, his eyes “were calm and empty.” (80). The narrator assented, and told him that he can keep the rest of the food he has when he is sent to the crematorium, as they can serve as comfort for him. The tale “The People Who Walked On” involves a narrator, a prisoner, who was playing soccer near Frauen Konzentration Lager, a concentration camp for women: “Every day, as soon as the evening meal was over, anybody who felt like it came to the field and kicked the ball around. Others stood in clusters by the fence and talked across the entire length of the camp with the girls” (83). During the game, he noted some women being sent to the gas chamber. Returning his attention to the game, he eventually thought of them again after some time. It becomes clear that he is completely desensitized to violence due to how much of it he is exposed to: “Between two throw-ins in a soccer game, right behind my back, three thousand people had been put to death.” (84). The narrator then details how “Often, in the middle of the night, I walked outside; the lamps glowed in the darkness above the barbed-wire fences. The roads were completely black, but I could distinctly hear the far-away human of a thousand voices—the procession moved on and on. And then the entire sky would light up; there would be a burst of flame above the wood … and terrible human screams. I stared into the night, numb, speechless, frozen with horror. My entire body trembled and rebelled, somehow even without my participation. I no longer controlled my body, although I could feel its every tremor. My mind was completely calm, only the body seemed to revolt.” (84-5). The narrator states that Sector C is very cramped, as it has more than thirty thousand women who experienced privation and a lack of sanitation and food. The women would frequently beg the narrator and the other workers for materials and information regarding the fates of their families. While they were somewhat sympathetic, they usually declined to give them anything or to answer their questions, as they had little to give and knew that it would be painful and somewhat foolish to inform them that their families had been gassed, as doing so would devastate them emotionally and make life harder to bear. The narrator remarks that there was a Persian Market in the concentration camp that had Block Elders, who “were Slovak girls … Every one of these girls had behind her several years of concentration camp. Every one of them remembered the early days of the F.K.L., when female corpses piled up along the barracks walls and rotted, unremoved, in hospital beds—and when human excrement grew into monstrous heaps inside the blocks. Despite their rough manner, they had retained their femininity and human kindness.” (88). One of them had a child with a Jewish prisoner with bad teeth and was desperate to keep it alive. Later, someone asks the narrator about evil, good, and justice. The narrator elegantly responds by saying that evil committed on a human level can be seen as insignificant on a larger level. He also states that those who suffered unfairly would strongly desire for their oppressors to be punished in the same manner, thereby showing that the world doesn’t operate in an ideal, pre-planned way. The woman he was talking to tells him that although his answers are good, he would still act unfairly in his own life if he had the opportunity, such as giving more food to his mistress if he was in a position of power rather than dividing it evenly among the prisoners.
Sometime later, the narrator talks with other prisoners involving how many have been executed, and historical context is seen below: if twenty thousand people were executed every day, that would mean one million dead: “‘Eh, they couldn’t have gassed that many every day. Though … who the hell knows, with four ovens and scores of deep pits …’ ‘Then count it this way: from Koszyce and Munkacz, almost 600,000. They got ‘em all, no doubt about it. And from Budapest? 300,000, easily.’” (90). The narrator’s comrade tells him that the Nazis will try to murder every perceived enemy they can get their hands on, and they then witness some people being ushered into the gas chamber. One of them, an old man, makes his way quickly to what he perceives as a place of rest (he was suffering from stomach cramps), causing the narrator to feel amused, as the old man didn't know he was going to his death. The process of execution is described as follows: “From the warehouse roofs you could see very clearly the flaming pits and the crematoria operating at full speed. You could see the people walk inside, undress. Then the S.S. men would quickly shut the windows, and firmly tighten the screws. After a few minutes, in which we did not even have time to tar a piece of roofing board properly, they opened the windows and the side doors and aired the place out. Then came the Sonderkommando to drag the corpses to the burning pits. And so it went on, from morning till night—every single day.” (95-6). On one occasion, a beautiful young woman who claimed to be brave was shot in the back by an SS into a pit full of burning corpses. The narrator remarks that he can’t remember much about Auschwitz, as all he can recall are a few memories. The next short story, “Auschwitz, Our Home,” involves a medical student who was imprisoned in Auschwitz. Borowski’s description of life in concentration camps is powerful, seeing how he makes it clear that even places like Auschwitz can always see things change for the worse. That is, from a historical standpoint, when Auschwitz was first constructed, conditions were so filthy and horrible that the prisoners who survived told others they were lucky to be sent there when they did and should be grateful for what little they have. As Borowski put, “the people here … have lived through and survived all the incredible horrors of the concentration camp, the concentration camp of the early years … At one time they weighed sixty pounds or less, they were beaten, selected for the gas chambers—you can understand, then, why today they wear ridiculous tight jackets, walk with a characteristic sway, and have nothing but praise of Auschwitz.” (103). The seniority of the prisoners is demonstrated by the serial number that is tattooed onto their bodies and clothing, and the narrator notes that his is very large. The narrator later recognizes the irony of the gate of Auschwitz, seeing how it read in German “‘Work makes one free.’ I suppose they believe it, the S.S. men and the German prisoners—those raised on Luther, Fichte, Hegel, Nietzsche.” (105). The narrator makes it clear that Auschwitz does have its own culture, and that prisoners sometimes moon over each other romantically, seeing how some prisoners feel affection for each other and plan the lives they’ll live together once the war is over. The narrator talks mundanely of the horrors of Nazi human experimentation: “The women in No. 10 are being artificially inseminated, injected with typhoid and malaria germs, or operated on. I once caught a glimpse of the man who heads the project: a man in a green hunting outfit and a gay little Tyrolian hat decorated with many brightly shining sports emblems, a man with the face of a kindly satyr. A university professor, I am told. The women are kept behind barred and boarded-up windows, but still the place is often broken into and the women are inseminated, not at all artificially. This must make the old professor very angry indeed.” (108). The narrator states that all the male prisoners think of romance as a distraction for their terrible situation, as that keeps them going. Furthermore, even some Kapos and officials don’t hesitate to copulate with females when given the opportunity, noted in how some were caught attempting to do so when they erroneously believed they had privacy. The narrator continues to describe the process of genocide: “Try to grasp the essence of this pattern of daily events, discarding your sense of horror and loathing and contempt, and find for it all a philosophic formula … first just one ordinary barn, brightly whitewashed—and here they proceed to asphyxiate people. Later, four large buildings, accommodating twenty thousand at a time without any trouble. No hocus-pocus, no poison, no hypnosis. Only several men directing traffic to keep operations running smoothly, and the thousands flow along like water from an open tap. All this happens just beyond the anaemic trees of the dusty little wood. Ordinary trucks bring people, return, then bring some more. No hocus-pocus, no poison, no hypnosis.” (112).
It is later noted by the narrator that people didn't resist due to believing in some form of salvation, which only facilitated their various ends. As he put it, “Despite the madness of war, we lived for a world that would be different. For a better world to come when all this is over. And perhaps even our being here is a step towards that world. Do you really think that, without the hope that such a world is possible, that the rights of man will be restored again, we could stand the concentration camp even for one day? It is that very hope that makes people go without a murmur to the gas chambers, keeps them from risking a revolt, paralyses them into numb inactivity. It is hope that breaks down family ties, makes mothers renounce their children, or wives sell their bodies for bread, or husbands kill. It is hope that compels man to hold on to one more day of life, because that day may be the day of liberation. Ah, and not even the hope for a different, better world, but simply for life, a life of peace and rest. Never before in the history of mankind has hope been stronger than man, but never also has it done so much harm … We were never taught how to give up hope, and this is why today we perish in gas chambers … still we continue to long for a world in which there is love between men, peace, and serene deliverance from our baser instincts. This, I suppose, is the nature of youth.” (121-2). The narrator later talks with his friend, and realizes one night that he doesn’t own anything: his clothes belong to the Nazis, as well as the medical tools he uses. Furthermore, if he is to die, his body will be turned into fertilizer and soap to benefit the Nazi economy, thus illustrating his complete and utter subservience: “elsewhere they make … lampshades out of human skin, and jewelry out of the bones.” (131). The narrator looks upon history in a new way, coming to realize the horrific price much infrastructure and many civilizations was founded on, seeing the brutality of the procedures involved in their formation: “We work beneath the earth and above it … with the spade, the pickaxe and the crowbar. We carry huge sacks of cement, lay bricks, put down rails, spread gravel, trample the earth … We are laying the foundation for some new, monstrous civilization … The Egyptian pyramids, the temples, and Greek statues—what a hideous crime they were! How much blood must have poured on to the Roman roads, the bulwarks, and the city walls. Antiquity—the tremendous concentration camp where the slave was branded on the forehead by his master, and crucified for trying to escape!” (131). The narrator then damningly describes the descriptions of reality by those who were privileged. For instance, he came to an epiphany that Plato was dishonest in his idea of a supremely perfect realm, “For the things of this world are not a reflection of the ideal, but a production of human sweat, blood and hard labour. It is we who built the pyramids, hewed the marble for the temples and the rocks for the imperial roads, we who pulled the oars in the galleys and dragged wooden ploughs, while they wrote dialogues and dramas, rationalized their intrigues by appeals in the name of the Fatherland, made wars over boundaries and democracies. We were filthy and died real deaths. They were ‘aesthetic’ and carried on subtle debates. There can be no beauty if it is paid for by human injustice, nor truth that passes over injustice in silence, nor moral virtue that condones it.” (131-2). The narrator notes that when people examine history, they focus on the figures who had a colossal impact, who are mostly those who happened to be born to powerful and wealthy families. He comes to realize that today no one knows the names of the slaves who were mistreated, abused, and worked to death in the past, and that if Germany wins WWII, no one will remember the prisoners of the concentration camps, as the Nazis, if they had their way, will exploit the prisoners until they die of exhaustion to form the foundation of their culture and “wonders.” He describes that a main focus of Auschwitz is indeed profit, seeing how companies and coal mines have benefited from slave labor by paying a cheap price for it. Auschwitz eventually hosted a wedding: those married were prisoners who were later forced to separate. Upon learning of the existence of such a wedding, many prisoners felt proud, as that was the first time Auschwitz conducted one. One of the narrator’s friends is a member of the Sonderkommando, and it is revealed that the Sonderkommando are compensated for the disgusting nature of their jobs by being given larger amounts of food. The friend of the narrator tells him that some Czechoslovakians had just been gassed, and that to burn some bodies quickly (he found it to be entertaining, as he had been rendered largely emotionless by the environment) he would “‘take four little kids with plenty of hair on their heads, then stick the heads together and light the hair.’” (142). The short story ends with the narrator noting that the world is ridiculous and an utter lie.
The short story “The Death of Schillinger” involves the First Sergeant Schillinger, a brutal SS guard. He enjoyed witnessing people being gassed, and he routinely abused the prisoners. Once, he heard that an attractive woman was being sent to the gas chambers. He went to her and dragged her away to use her, but she resisted, throwing gravel in his face before seizing his revolver and shooting him multiple times in the abdomen. She then shot the SS chief in the face. Those who were about to be gassed were driven into a commotion, and the narrator and the others, who were members of the Sonderkommando, drove them into the gas chambers using physical force. Schillinger was still alive minutes later and felt no guilt for what he was responsible for doing, instead moaning “‘O Gott, mein Gott, was hab’ ich getan, dass ich so leiden muss?’, which means—O God, my God, what have I done to deserve such suffering?” (146). This effectively illustrates that many of the Nazis viewed the Holocaust as a noble endeavor: if you tried to explain to them how their actions are wrong, they’re quite likely to deny your allegations and to defend their actions. Schillinger later died from his wounds. Before Auschwitz was liberated, the Sonderkommando, knowing they would be put to death themselves, revolted. However, the SS saw them leaving, and utilized machine guns to kill every single one of them. “The Man With the Package,” like many others, narrates the story of a person witnessing people taken to the gas chamber. “The Supper” involves a prisoner who watches the executions of twenty Russian POWs. Their emaciated and damaged bodies are described as follows: “Every fold, bulge or wrinkle in their clothing; the cracked soles in their worn-out boots; the dry lumps of brown clay stuck to the edges of their trousers; the thick seams along their crotches; the white thread showing on the blue stripe of their prison suits; their sagging buttocks; their stiff hands and bloodless fingers twisted in pain, with drops of dry blood at the joints; their swollen wrists where the skin had started turning blue from the rusty wire cutting into the flesh; their naked elbows, pulled back unnaturally and tied with another piece of wire—all this emerged out of the surrounding blackness as if carved in ice.” (153). A Nazi Kommandant informs the SS about to execute the Russians that they’re Communists and deserve to be punished. The SS raised their rifles to meet the heads of the prisoners. The narrator notes, “They [the SS] had had time to eat, to change to fresh, gala uniforms, and even to have a manicure. Their fingers were clenched tightly around their rifle butts and their fingernails looked neat and pink; apparently they were planning to join the local girls at the village dance.” (155). They then callously shot the Russians in the head, remaining methodical in their murders while doing them: “The rifles barked, the soldiers jumped back a step to keep from being splattered by the shattered heads. The Russians seemed to quiver on their feet for an instant and then fell to the ground like heavy sacks, splashing the pavement with blood and scattered chunks of brain. Throwing their rifles over their shoulders, the soldiers marched off quickly.” (155). After the execution, a Jew from Estonia who had been “Muslimized” informed the narrator that he believed that brains are consumable. “A True Story” is the factual account of when Borowski was seriously ill with typhoid fever and was close to dying. He describes the weakness of his physical form: “I lay on a bare straw mattress under a blanket that stank of the dried-up excrement and pus of my predecessors. I was so weak I could not even scratch myself or chase away the fleas. Enormous bedsores covered my hips, buttocks, and shoulders. My skin, stretched tightly over the bones, felt red and hot, as from fresh sunburn. Disgusted by my own body, I found relief in listening to the groans of others … I thought I would suffocate from thirst.” (157). Near Borowski were other patients, most of whom suffered from their corresponding physical ailments. A particularly memorable person he knew, a young boy with a Bible, disappeared one day without a trace; Borowski was later informed that he was sleeping in the very bed he died on. The story “Silence” sees an American officer asking the prisoners of a liberated concentration camp to not do anything violent, as the Nazis would be put on trial for their atrocities. The prisoners appeared to give him their assent, but when he was far away, they took out a guard whom they had gagged and sat on while the American officer was speaking to them to prevent him from giving away his location. They then murdered him, full of wrath, to release their desire for retaliation. “The January Offensive” has the narrator talking with a poet, his wife, and his mistress of the nature of the world. Their conversation included the deliverance from certain demise prisoners who were in concentration camps by the Russian January Offensive. Another story that was told saw a young Russian woman who was also a soldier giving birth in a hospital: the next morning, she went to fight with her child tied to her back.
“A Visit” is a story that shows the astounding nature of change, as some prisoners who went through concentration camps and were utterly devastated and wounded were able to adjust to regular civilian life upon their release. “The World of Stone” contains much existential dread, as the narrator frequently imagines the acceleration of the increase of the universe’s size, which terrifies him due to fearing that it would rip itself apart, dissolving itself, “as though it were made not of solid matter but only of fleeting sound.” (177). The narrator doesn’t pursue many passions due to his recognition of the ephemerality of human life and existence, though he does enjoy some activities, such as going on walks, noting his surroundings, and entering buildings to observe their contents. The narrator would frequently go on long walks and return to his house only in the night, where he would remain in solitude in a room with a window. The narrator is shown to be very perceptive and patient, as he makes it a habit to watch the world transition from light to dark, from noise to a certain degree of silence. To deal with the absurdity of life and the randomness of circumstance, the narrator would “take out fresh paper, arrange it neatly on the desk … And since today the world has not yet blown away, I take out fresh paper, arrange it neatly on the desk, and closing my eyes try to find within me a tender feeling for the workmen hammering the rails, for the peasant women with their ersatz sour cream, the trains full of merchandise, the fading sky above the ruins, for the passers-by on the street below and the newly installed windows, and even for my wife who is washing dishes in the kitchen alcove; and with a tremendous intellectual effort I attempt to grasp the true significance of the events, things and people I have seen. For I intend to write a great, immortal epic, worthy of this unchanging, difficult world chiselled out of stone.” (180).
Personal thoughts:
This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski is an excellent collection of short stories that excellently portray what Borowski and innumerable other sentient beings went through during the Holocaust, for it is direct, descriptive, and damningly telling. Borowski’s stories, though horrifying and brutal in the extreme, are historically accurate, seeing his personal experience and the fact that millions lost their lives due to the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis. When it comes to the themes of this book, it can be hard to find them, but I believe there are indeed some to learn, such as the vitality of preventative action: the emotions that led to mass tragedies frequently like the Holocaust include hatred, wrath, envy, insecurity, and shame. That is, the Nazis loathed ethnic minorities, Jewish people, and those who didn't fit the mold of society and desired to punish them to assuage their wrath. The Nazis came to power due to the envy many German citizens had concerning other areas, as they felt that the Treaty of Versailles was a con and victor’s justice (it certainly was on many levels). Also, the German populace, which suffered from much economic hardship during the Great Depression, was very insecure and somewhat ashamed of itself, as it existed in an age where nationalism was a very prominent feature of culture. Thus, if the future is to be made a better place, negative emotions should be decreased in their frequency and severity. While books like This Way for the Gas are heartbreaking, the future holds much promise, seeing that technology, when properly used, can bring unimaginable benefits to not just humans but all sentient life—this is best encapsulated in the fields of nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and bioengineering, seeing how they can get rid of various issues lifeforms suffer from. I highly recommend This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen to anyone interested in short stories, moving texts, Holocaust literature, classics, and memoirs.
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