This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

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This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

by Tadeusz Borowski, Barbara Vedder (Editor/Translator), Jan Kott (Introduction), Michael Kandel (Translator)

4.06 of 5 stars 4.06 · rating details · 1,926 ratings · 133 reviews

Tadeusz Borowski's concentration camp stories were based on his own experiences surviving Auschwitz and Dachau. In spare, brutal prose he describes a world where the will to survive overrides compassion and prisoners eat, work and sleep a few yards from where others are murdered; where the difference between human beings is reduced to a second bowl of soup, an extra blanke...more

Paperback, 180 pages

Published August 1st 1992 by Penguin Classics (first published 1948)

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Feb 20, 2008 Leah rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: eastern-european-literature, purchased-2008, read-2008, historical-texts, political-theory

It is difficult, with a moat of sixty years and an intellectual barricade of countless other World War II and Holocaust-related reading, to adequately begin to review this collection of short stories from Tadeusz Borowski. Falling back into the same reiteration of virtually all Holocaust/post-war writings is almost too easy: "This book serves as a reminder of the atrocities of war ...", "this book demonstrates how terrible man can be..." etc, etc, ad infinitum. Ad nauseum. The sorts of blanket r...more It is difficult, with a moat of sixty years and an intellectual barricade of countless other World War II and Holocaust-related reading, to adequately begin to review this collection of short stories from Tadeusz Borowski. Falling back into the same reiteration of virtually all Holocaust/post-war writings is almost too easy: "This book serves as a reminder of the atrocities of war ...", "this book demonstrates how terrible man can be..." etc, etc, ad infinitum. Ad nauseum. The sorts of blanket recognitions and statements about Holocaust writing do not, in general, do either post-war mentalities, nor the atrocities of the event, justice: they provide an automated recognition of the war, but without truly instigating thought, consideration, and insight of what actually happened.

In many respects, This Way for the Gas ... establishes itself as a remarkably unique piece of post-war Holocaust writing. While Borowski himself was a kapo in Auschwitz, his experience there was vastly different from many others who passed through the camp. His lifestyle was comparatively luxuriant: he was afforded packages from home, 'organised' (stolen) goods from around the camp, and generally held a position of relatively power over the fellow inmates. Because he was a Pole (rather than a Jew or a Russian), Borowski possessed a substantial advantage over many of the most barbaric treatments at Auschwitz. Additionally, being selected as a kapo forced his participation in many of the very atrocities ocurring at Auschwitz: Borowski was likely feared and despised by many of the inmates under him in the camp's hierarchy.

The writing is terse, resigned, and strikingly detached. Concurrently with This Way for the Gas ..., I was reading 'Auschwitz' (by L. Rees). In this latter book, Rees stipulates that how many concentration camp workers managed to survive, despite the crushing mental and physical burdens, was in effectively detaching oneself from the surroundings. The behavior of detaching oneself from ones' environment is exemplified throughout 'This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen.' Borowski himself creates a mental barricade between himself and his surroundings; in one scene he discusses playing keeper during a football game with other inmates. Between one out-of-bounds and a second, he sees a trainload (approximately five thousand) of people sorted, selected, and gassed only a few hundred meters from where he is playing.

The frankness (and, to us, callousness - though at the time, such responses were likely appropriate and acceptable given the circumstance) of the prose makes Borowski's works difficult to read. Inevitably, there is the comparison to Wiesel's 'Night' (another magnificent piece of writing), but the similarities, outside of being narratives of concentration camp survivors, are few. While Wiesel's writing is humane, gutwrenching, and almost impossibly difficult to read, Borowski's is so lacking of humanity, warmth, and compassion that it's nearly more difficult to read than Wiesel's writing. Borowski doesn't seem to be completely devoid of humanity, but the demonstrated acceptance of the conditions around him do not provide as distinct a demarcation as Wiesel's writings: inmates are not consistently helpless victims, nor are SS guards always the most brutal of characters.

Borowski's writing remains one of the most complex pieces I have ever read. There are many levels to what he has written, and his reflections and thoughts are inconsistent with their acceptance and understanding of his environment. Like much else written during the time, he ultimately is an individual trying desperately to cope with a decidedly inhuman, catastrophic situation as best he can.
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Aug 09, 2007 Eric rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone who denies or ignores Mankind's evil nature

A book to test your fortitude. If you can read more than one story at once, your capacity for the banality of human injustice and horror is great indeed. The only hope to be found in reading this collection of short stories is in the knowledge that the author survived to tell them.

The 5-star rating system is ridiculously inadequate for a book like this--perhaps for all books. Did I 'like' it? Did I 'enjoy' reading it? No. But I could not put it out of my mind. There are passages so terrible that...more

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Feb 26, 2009 Evan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009-reads, world-war-ii, __in-my-collection, warfare, philosophy, holocaust, faustian-bargain, survival, jewish

Passage from this book:

"The four of us became involved in a heated discussion...by maintaining that in this war morality, national solidarity, patriotism and the ideals of freedom, justice and human dignity had all slid off man like a rotten rag. We said that there is no crime that a man will not commit in order to save himself. And, having saved himself, he will commit crimes for increasingly trivial reasons; he will commit them first out of duty, then from habit, and finally---for pleasure."

Br...more Passage from this book:

"The four of us became involved in a heated discussion...by maintaining that in this war morality, national solidarity, patriotism and the ideals of freedom, justice and human dignity had all slid off man like a rotten rag. We said that there is no crime that a man will not commit in order to save himself. And, having saved himself, he will commit crimes for increasingly trivial reasons; he will commit them first out of duty, then from habit, and finally---for pleasure."

Brutal, honest and unsparing. Evil so pervasive that it becomes fun. Victims, objects of contempt, even by other victims. You've probably not read another Holocaust book like this. There are no good guys and bad guys. All humanity, and even the victims, are reviled.

Borowski killed himself in 1951, ironically with gas, just a few years after being released from a concentration camp. He was the leading hope of Polish literature in the postwar years. He left behind several volumes, including this slim collection of observations about the horrors of the camps. From the introduction I'm gleaning that this is one of the greatest Holocaust books. Skimming through it, I like the style. I can tell right away this is going to be good. I wonder how it places next to Elie Wiesel's "Night." I shall see. It's a slim book at just 170 pages, so should be a quick one... I know, it sounds depressing, but I think I'm ready for something with some weight.

Reading the biographical introduction, as good as it is, did not quite prepare me for the power of the first story in this collection, a blow-by-blow of what it's like to work as the "welcoming committee" as the trains arrive at Auschwitz.
So I'm reading the second piece, set in a more lyrical surrounding, and yet the cruelties are no less stark.

Borowski's expertise at describing the action and surroundings and the admission of his own complicity in the evil sets this above more black and white heroes and villains sorts of accounts. His approach is one reason that these writings were controversial among party leaders in post-war Poland. They wanted something more mythical. Borowski bore witness, without the filter of agenda. Some will not want to listen and accept what he had to say.

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Jun 03, 2008 Nancy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics, fiction, military-war, short-stories, european-lit

This collection of short stories by Tadeusz Borowski, a concentration camp survivor who later committed suicide, is one of the most beautifully written accounts of survival in Auschwitz while Poland was under Nazi occupation. Highly recommended.

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Jan 18, 2013 Randolph Carter rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, literature

This is a grim little book. It is best described as a few fictional stories and some short pieces, not quite stories sometimes, primarily about life in Auschwitz/Birkenau from the first person perspective of one of the camp's non-Jewish inmates (this is important). As a non-Jew the narrator's lot is considerably better than most, while still being abominable.

The stories are plainly told, matter of fact almost, without much commentary on the situation, etc. The author's approach is very effective...more This is a grim little book. It is best described as a few fictional stories and some short pieces, not quite stories sometimes, primarily about life in Auschwitz/Birkenau from the first person perspective of one of the camp's non-Jewish inmates (this is important). As a non-Jew the narrator's lot is considerably better than most, while still being abominable.

The stories are plainly told, matter of fact almost, without much commentary on the situation, etc. The author's approach is very effective at communicating the eerie everyday-ness of concentration camp life: "just another day unloading 3 or 4 trains of people for the gas chambers." Borowski lets the context, the very seeming ordinariness of these dreadful experiences, emphasize the appalling nature of the tasks and situations. And in the end everybody is just getting by as best they can.

A recurring theme is the docility of the people being herded to their doom. After all, people had nothing to lose by attempting to attack their executioners. Why didn't they? Borowski details people taking their last feeble possessions with them as they wait in line to be gassed. Why? What feeble hope was there? Each one seems to feel that however unlikely they are going to be saved somehow. And we are horrified because we know they will not be.

In one poignant scene, made all the more striking by being the lone example in the book, a young woman surprises her lecherous oppressor on the Auschwitz train unloading ramp by striking him and taking his gun. She shoots him and of course is shot, but none of the people surrounding her that already know they are being herded to their death, rise up with her. They ignore it, avert their gaze; not wanting to get involved.

Why do we read books like this? I don't buy the: "it's my duty to read this so it doesn't happen again." BS. There is some dirty little voyeur aspect to fiction or non-fiction like this. Death camp stories. True stories. People like this stuff. They want to read it; wish there was more of it. We tell ourselves it's okay because it really happened that way, it's history, and we need to see it, but if we were JUST making this up for fun we would be called more than sick little pornographers. We are peeking into other people's torment and death like a peep show nightmare. Which is what real horror is all about, I guess.

So, on that happy note, if you are interested in reading about what it was like in the death camps and how people manage to live their lives under the most appallingly unimaginable conditions, this should be right up your alley....
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Dec 02, 2008 Adam rated it 4 of 5 stars

Almost as soon as the Nazi camps were liberated after the Second World War, Borowski set about recreating that world in a series of shorter pieces. He only wrote for a few years--before his suicide--but he was one of the first to do so to warm literary reception.

Varying in format from a series of letters, 3-page stories to some larger character studies, this collection does an excellent job of illustrating why fiction may be the best/only way to capture the essence of truly catastrophic moments...more

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Dec 13, 2012 Mark Rossiter rated it 5 of 5 stars

Tadeusz Borowski, who wrote these stories, lived through Auschwitz somehow, and left sharply told tales of hell behind. There is nothing to say about them by way of commentary; they just need to be read. But his guilt (one has to assume) was so unconquerable that he killed himself – by gas, indeed – in 1951. He had, as he puts it in this book, “broken daily bread with the beast”; and so the Nazis claimed another victim. But without his testimony, and that of those like him, we would not know.

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May 19, 2012 Rose rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"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 to kill. It is hope that compels man to h...more

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Nov 14, 2011 Bronte rated it 5 of 5 stars

Usually with books like this, books written about World War II and the atrocities that occurred there is an overwhelming abundance of emotion. Sadness, despair, anger, hatred, confusion, the list goes on. Borowski however does a completely different route for writing this book, instead completely devoid of emotion. I have to say that the route he took was much more startling than any other emotion that attempted to convey the horrors. He spoke of bread and corpses in the same sentences, simply w...more

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Apr 20, 2011 Rebecca Brink rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography, fiction, history

One of the best works I've ever read about the concentration camps. Borowski seems to contend that there was nothing romantic or good vs. evil about Auschwitz; there were no heroes or villains. This book deeply challenges our notions of ourselves. Every part of this book is surprising and frank. You'd think that no one would have the chutzpah to say these things, but then, after surviving Auschwitz, what could Borowski possibly have to lose by saying them?

A favorite excerpt:

"Do you really think...more

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Sep 25, 2010 Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly rated it 4 of 5 stars

The trains would arrive and efficiently emptied of their human cargo. Those who will be left behind are the dead and those too weak to move. Among the dead would be children, many of them practically just babies, who died of hunger, suffocation, or who had been trampled upon. Some are bloated already, having died several days before. They will pick them up, by their feet, several in one hand like they were carrying dead chickens.

A few of those unloaded from the trains knew their fate already. Wo...more The trains would arrive and efficiently emptied of their human cargo. Those who will be left behind are the dead and those too weak to move. Among the dead would be children, many of them practically just babies, who died of hunger, suffocation, or who had been trampled upon. Some are bloated already, having died several days before. They will pick them up, by their feet, several in one hand like they were carrying dead chickens.

A few of those unloaded from the trains knew their fate already. Women with young children go straight to the gas chambers. One woman was running away from a young child who was calling after her: "Mama, Mama, don't leave me!" She was saying, he's not my child, he's not my child--aware that she may have a chance of being spared from the gas chamber if she's not burdened with a child. A German saw her and expressed disgust, called her a Jewess witch or something for abandoning her own child. He then put both of them in the truck with those to be gassed.

These were just a few of the stories within the stories in this volume.

Tadeusz Borowski (TB) was born of Polish parents in Ukraine in 1922. When the second world war broke out, the family had been living in Warsaw, Poland. He was then just almost 17 years old.

During the German occupation of Poland secondary school and college were prohibited. TB studied in an underground school. His first book of poetry was published in 1942 clandestinely.

His fiancee was first arrested, then himself. He was imprisoned in Auschwitz and Dachau from 1943 to 1945. This book is actually a compilation of short stories he wrote immediately after the war, when he was about 24 years old. These were true accounts of his experiences in these death camps and were highly acclaimed in Polish literary circles. TB died in the evening of 1 July 1951, three days after his wife (his former fiancee who had also survived the concentration camps) gave birth to their daughter. He gassed himself. He was just about to turn 30.

How are these stories different from the holocaust stories I've read before? Not being a Jew, and technically an Aryan, TB was treated a little bit differently from most of the victims of this genocide, most of whom had gone stright to the gas chambers the minute they arrive at the concentration camps. For one, he didn't seem to have suffered from hunger that much. Over breakfast, for example, he and his colleagues would discuss past shipments like they were Customs people discussing ships laden with imported goods from all over the world. They would say, for example, that the shipment (of people to be gassed) from this or that place was good because they were able to confiscate a lot of food, or whiskey, from the passengers. Or that this shipment from another place was the worst because they saw a lot of friends, relatives or acquiantances there.

In one scene, the Germans executed a group of captured Russian soldiers. One German soldier for each, gun aimed at the head close range. Bam, bam, bam! Then the Germans leave. The concentration camp prisoners descend upon the dead Russian soldiers. For their clothes? No. For their shoes perhaps? Think again. For the soldiers' BRAINS scattered on the ground. They ate them. They were hungry.

TB survived, but this is more than just a survivor and his stories. The mitigation of his own suffering helped him retain his powers of concentration and observation. He was even aware of his own "cruelty", a cruelty brought about by his helplessness and fear and the instinct to survive. (less)

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Feb 05, 2010 Usha Alexander rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone who's interested in understanding human nature.

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Tadeusz Borowski was 21 years old when he was deported to the cluster of concentration camps in southern Poland, collectively known as Auschwitz, in 1943. His fiancée had mysteriously disappeared one night; when he went to look for her, he was befallen by her same fate: entrapment by the Nazis, arrest, and deportation for participation in the Polish resistance.

Until that night, young Borowski had been a student of literature in the underground university of Warsaw. Since it was the Nazis' in...more Tadeusz Borowski was 21 years old when he was deported to the cluster of concentration camps in southern Poland, collectively known as Auschwitz, in 1943. His fiancée had mysteriously disappeared one night; when he went to look for her, he was befallen by her same fate: entrapment by the Nazis, arrest, and deportation for participation in the Polish resistance.

Until that night, young Borowski had been a student of literature in the underground university of Warsaw. Since it was the Nazis' intention to enslave the Poles, secondary school and university were forbidden to them during the occupation. Still, thousands risked death and deportation, meeting in small groups in private homes in order to pursue their studies. (This was a system revived from an earlier time, as similar restrictions had been resisted by Poles under the Russian occupation some decades earlier, when Marie Curie had studied in the underground "Floating University" of Warsaw.)

Borowski had started to write early, publishing his dark poetry through the underground press during his student days. While at Auschwitz, he wrote lengthy letters to his fiancée in the women's camp, and immediately after the war he wrote several devastatingly stark short stories recalling his life in the camps. A selection of these letters and stories have been published and translated in a small volume with the English title This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen (although his story by that name doesn't appear in the collection). Having survived two years, mostly as a high-level prisoner, in a place where surreal violence and suffering were normalized and experienced as mundane, Borowski's first-person stories are characterized by a brutal acknowledgment of the fact that such extremes of acceptance, of behavior, are, indeed, humanly possible. The penetrating honesty and deep compassion of his writing confronts the reader surprisingly, a mixture of darkness and wonder that opens more questions than it settles on the nature of the human beast and gives a more textured evocation of life in a Nazi concentration camp than any I've read before.

While working in a position of relative comfort as an orderly in the medical facility at Auschwitz, where prisoners are healed or used for experimentation, where infants' corpses are cataloged, he writes to his lover in the women's camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau about the normalcy of the absurd, the daily goings on around him. These letters constitute the heart of this collection. In them, as in his stories, he writes about death, about the lines of prisoners headed for the gas chambers, about other murders and tortures inflicted by prisoners or guards; he writes about love, about his dreams for the future, about the emptiness that encroaches upon them all. He writes about the exhilaration of a prisoner boxing match, the pleasure of listening to the prisoner symphony orchestra, the greedy desire of the men prisoners for the women of the "Puff," the camp brothel where women prisoners are both pimped and privileged by the camp authorities.

He writes as a slave:

We work beneath the earth and above it, under a roof and in the rain, 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. Only now do I realize what price was paid for building the ancient civilizations. 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! Antiquity—the conspiracy of the free men against the slaves!

You know how much I used to like Plato. Today I realize he lied. For the things of this world are not a reflection of the ideal, but a product 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.

.... If the Germans win the war, what will the world know about us? They will erect huge buildings, highways, factories, soaring monuments. Our hands will be placed under every brick, and our backs will carry the steel rails and the slabs of concrete. They will kill off our families, our sick, our aged. They will murder our children.

And we shall be forgotten, drowned out by the voices of the poets, the jurists, the philosophers, the priests. They will produce their own beauty, virtue, and truth. They will produce religion.

He writes as a jailer:

Today is Sunday. In the morning we made another little sightseeing tour, took a look at the women's experimental block (they push out their heads between the bars, just like the rabbits my father used to keep; do you remember—grey ones with one floppy ear?).... We saw some civilians: two frightened women in fur coats and a man with tired, worried eyes.... The women gazed with horror at the prisoners in stripes and at the massive camp installations: the two-storey barracks, the double-row of barbed wire, the concrete wall beyond it, the solid watch-towers.... But they are really quite amusing, these civilians. They react to the camp as a wild boar reacts to firearms. Understanding nothing of how it functions, they look upon it as something inexplicable, almost abnormal, something beyond human endurance. Remember the horror you felt when they arrested you?

Today, having become totally familiar with the inexplicable and the abnormal; having learned to live on intimate terms with the crematoria, the itch and tuberculosis; having understood the true meaning of the wind, rain and sun, of bread and turnip soup, of work to survive, of slavery and power; having, so to say, daily broken bread with the beast—I look at these civilians with a certain indulgence, the way a scientist regards a layman, or the initiated an outsider.

As the Russians descended upon Auschwitz in 1944, Borowski was evacuated to Germany, along with all other prisoners who could walk. He ended up at Dachau and was finally liberated in May of 1945.
After the war, Borowski remained in Germany as a displaced person, writing and publishing his first stories about life at Auschwitz, and searching frantically for his fiancée, eventually learning that she'd been evacuated from Birkenau by the Red Cross and was living in Sweden. They were not reunited until both returned to Poland in 1946, a decision they—especially she—resisted because their country was now under Communist rule.

But the young survivors eventually married; Borowski continued to write about his experiences in the camp and as a displaced person. Though his writing was considered "amoral" and "nihilistic" by the new authorities, the Communist party also recognized Borowski as a great literary talent. They embraced him and promoted his career. Borowski joined the Communist party in 1948. But as his entanglements with the party grew darker, it's said his writing became stifled and strained, as though he grew increasingly morally confounded.

In 1951, three days after his wife gave birth to their daughter, Borowski visited her in the hospital and then went home and opened a gas valve. It was his third attempt at suicide, and this time he was successful. He was not yet 30 years old.(less)

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Jul 03, 2009 IWB rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature-fiction

This is Holocaust literature-- very good Holocaust literature. It is Holocaust literature devoid of pontification, sentimentalism, and examination. There are no rhetorical questions about ethics, human nature, and the problem of evil. Instead, there are just frank descriptions about the banality of witnessing daily mass murders, the apathy toward the pitiful cries of victims, and the tedium of stealing food, bribing guards, and being annoyed by other inmates.

This is a collection of short storie...more This is Holocaust literature-- very good Holocaust literature. It is Holocaust literature devoid of pontification, sentimentalism, and examination. There are no rhetorical questions about ethics, human nature, and the problem of evil. Instead, there are just frank descriptions about the banality of witnessing daily mass murders, the apathy toward the pitiful cries of victims, and the tedium of stealing food, bribing guards, and being annoyed by other inmates.

This is a collection of short stories whose main character, and narrator, throughout is a Polish (Aryan—Caucasian, non-Jewish) prisoner of the Nazi racial state in Auschwitz. It is commonly accepted that this character is the autobiographical personification of Borowski himself, who survived both Auschwitz and Dachau. Through these stories, Borowski shows us that survival in a Nazi death camp required more than what we usually learn from Holocaust literature. We know that survivors’ were daily subjected to brutal physical and psychological circumstances; daily exposed to desperate emaciated and wretched victims; and daily witness to horrific systematic and efficient routines—of slavery and death. Such survivors are rightly recognized for those qualities that allowed them to endure Nazi atrocity. But Borowski forces us to recognize a fact about surviving concentration life that is not so happily discussed. Survival required a particular approach to the culture of concentration camp life. It is a culture that challenges the core of any and all ethical standards one might have. Survival trumps compassion; perseverance overrides virtue; pragmatics doles out truth. Tadeusz remarked that if anyone were to eat the watery soup the Nazi’s fed the prisoners, no one would survive more than two weeks; yet, he, and a number of others, did survive—without eating the daily Nazi chow.

Once--while surviving--Tadeusz was goalkeeper with his back to the ramp of the crematorium. The ball rolled out and hit the fence behind him. He noticed the ramp. The trains had just rolled in and people were emerging from the cattle cars, slowly moving toward the ramp. The procession grew as more and more cars pulled up. The people sat down on the grass and gazed in the direction of the game. He picked up the ball and kicked it back into play. A few moments later, the ball rolled back to him and hit the fence again. Once more, he went to retrieve it. He stooped down to reach it—and in amazement—he noticed that the ramp was empty. Out of the whole bunch, none remained. The cars were gone too. Between two throw-ins of a soccer game, right behind his back, three thousand people had been put to death.

If reading this book doesn't affect you, then you can take comfort in knowing that you share something in common with the Nazi's who lit the flus.
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May 29, 2011 Vasha7 rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

These stories chronicles of the way that concentration camp prisoners grasp at any wisp of power over one another, the power of possession of a slice of bread, of being placed as foreman of a work gang, and struggle to best one another (but constantly reminded that their very existence is threatened by the real people of power, the S.S.) I was scandalized at myself during the reading of "A Day at Harmenz" to find myself taking sides in this; how could I feel Schadenfreude at the "Kapo" getting b...more

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Nov 19, 2012 Mel Bossa rated it 5 of 5 stars

I feel hollow after reading this. I want to go back to 1951, when Tadeusz was 29 and days from ending his life. I want to save him. I want to say the right thing, find the exact words that would turn his world of stone into a world of heat and flesh and hope. And I know that is impossible. So arrogant and naive of me.
Faced with terror and cruel madness, intelligence and sensitivity can be a man's worst enemy I suppose. There is so much guilt and hurt in Borowski's stories, but those feelings ar...more I feel hollow after reading this. I want to go back to 1951, when Tadeusz was 29 and days from ending his life. I want to save him. I want to say the right thing, find the exact words that would turn his world of stone into a world of heat and flesh and hope. And I know that is impossible. So arrogant and naive of me.
Faced with terror and cruel madness, intelligence and sensitivity can be a man's worst enemy I suppose. There is so much guilt and hurt in Borowski's stories, but those feelings are cleverly disguised behind a thin veil of pragmatism--the tone always a bit cold, as if the horror he witnessed every day had heightened his senses until they had burned out and dulled...
But he saw everything. Every nuance, every detail--nothing escaped him. I have read about the Holocaust in many forms, and I have seen hundreds of images of it, and I have watched the movies, but never, ever have I understood it this way. To the bone.
I don't know if it's because I am older now and more worn down by the meanness I see almost everyday, little things I catch people doing or saying, things that are tiny buds in the vast garden of Evil, but I read these stories and felt for the first time a sense of great shame and loss and torment. It happened. Those things happened.
I don't think I had understood it until This way for the gas, Ladies and Gentlemen.

From, "The man with the package."

The doctor came from Berlin, had a daughter and a wife in Argentina, and he would sometimes speak of himself as wir Preussen, with a smile that combined the bitterness of a Jew with the pride of a former Prussian officer. "I don't know. I don't know what I would do if I were going to the gas chamber. I might also want to take along my package."
He turned towards me with a shy smile. I noticed that he was very tired and looked like he had not slept for days.
"I think that even if I was being led to the oven, I would still believe that something would surely happen along the way. Holding a package would be a little like holding somebody's hand, you see.(less)

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Nov 06, 2009 Ankur rated it 3 of 5 stars

F Scott Fitzgerald said that ‘the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.' In this novel, prisoners must live knowing that others are dying, they must temper guilt with arrogance, they create self-imposed blind spots in order to endure two opposed ideas—that they have been chosen to live, and that this could change at a moment’s notice. They see the crematorium from the outside until they are to...more

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Jul 09, 2007 Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone

Shelves: dead

the narrator's utterly unsentimental description of tearing a baby from its mother's arms.

i read this late at night, a while ago, when we lived in an apartment next to a couple that fought constantly. She was a tall red-headed tri-athlete, who routinely beat the shit out of the guy, who was a pot-smoking airplane mechanic. On the night I was reading this book, they were going at it and, although I usually found their fighting funny, this night I was sobbing.

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Jan 03, 2008 Erin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Beautifully crafted stories that depict the normalcy of life under horrifying conditions. They show evil not as strong or overwhelming, but logical - people make series of very rational compromises with devestating results. Sort of interesting to think about from an economic/game theory perspective - quite the prisoner's dilemma. Maybe most of what I appreciate, though, is the poetry of the prose - phrases still echo in my head.

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Feb 17, 2012 Andrew added it

Shelves: eastern-european-fiction

I feel like I'm missing something here. This is apparently considered to be one of the most moving accounts of the Holocaust, but I honestly found it rather unimpressive. It wasn't because of lack of drama-- Primo Levi told his Holocaust stories through banal detail and it was remarkably effective. I think Borowski did his best to tell his stories in a straightforward manner, without reflecting on them too much, hoping that his details would show the absurdity of the situation in which he found...more

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Aug 01, 2007 Anna rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is absolutely heart-breaking. It is a collection of short stories about first-, second-, and third-person accounts of the Holocaust and its horrors. I read it for a college class, and I was unable to read more than one story per night because the writing was so intense. However, I think it is a necessary read for anyone interested in history and getting a better perspective on what exactly happened during the Holocaust.

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Jan 14, 2010 David rated it 5 of 5 stars

Suffering is not ennobling: it is just suffering. Genocide does not martyr people: it just kills them. There was no triumph to dying in the camps. The victims of the Holocaust were not just tortured and dehumanized, but often demoralized into shocking behavior. This book will denies the reader the comforting fallacy of a world in black and white, a world made up of evil people and good ones. A “fortunate” non-Jew, Borowski was arrested and spent two years as a prisoner and orderly in Auschwitz,...more Suffering is not ennobling: it is just suffering. Genocide does not martyr people: it just kills them. There was no triumph to dying in the camps. The victims of the Holocaust were not just tortured and dehumanized, but often demoralized into shocking behavior. This book will denies the reader the comforting fallacy of a world in black and white, a world made up of evil people and good ones. A “fortunate” non-Jew, Borowski was arrested and spent two years as a prisoner and orderly in Auschwitz, Dachau and other camps, where he survived as countless others did, but helping to keep the camps running. Although to say he survived the camps is misleading, as he committed suicide by gas in 1951. In the interval between the war and his delayed casualty (just as Hans Fallada wrote Every Man Dies Alone to capture his experience as a German citizen), he wrote these tales. There were acts of resistance and heroism, to be sure, but for most of those who survived the camps and many who didn’t, terror was something that was both taken and given, and even the ghastliest atrocities become commonplace after a while. People are remarkably adaptable; they get used to anything. They laugh and play football as thousands file by on their way to the gas chambers. Clothing is better than nakedness; people with food are better than starving people; the living have triumphed over the dead. This is the morality of the camps, these are some of the lessons to be derived from these anti-heroic stories drawn from Borowski’s experiences, but the book cannot be reduced to such platitudes. The experience of reading them is a little harder to convey. There are images and situations that scar the mind a little, and it is a good thing these are short stories, because you want to pause in the reading, and some readers may find that one or two is enough. But the cumulative effect of reading the whole book is unique, and in some ways more both more bearable and more disturbing than Elie Weisel’s Night. Truly one of the most profound reading experiences I have ever had, and one I will surely return to.
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Nov 13, 2011 Samantha rated it 4 of 5 stars

Borowski gives a new perspective on the events in the Nazi camps of the Holocaust. His narrator is a prisoner in a concentration camp who guarantees his own survival by working for the Nazis. He and a few other men he is close with unload the trucks full of scared and starved people who are now prisoners. The new prisoners have everything taken from them - their belongings, valuables, and even their families. Many are separated.

Borowski writes in first person, which gives the reader the scene f...more

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May 14, 2011 Silver rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: holocaust-literature-fiction-and-s

This is by the most haunting and harrowing piece of Holocaust literature that I have ever read. Each novel in this genre seems to gain different reactions from readers, and this to me, has been the one that really struck me. I’ve been tormented by this, had nightmares and couldn’t sleep. The words, emotions and situations have stayed with me long after the pages have been turned, and will almost certainly stay with me throughout my life. This is one of the lesser known piece of Holocaust literat...more

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May 14, 2007 patrick o'hara rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is an account of a Holocaust camp from the point of view of a polish communist.

It's essentially the same thing as "Night", except the first person dialogue isn't from a Jew's point of view.

I recommend this to anyone who thinks the Holocaust media forms they've witnessed haven't been shocking enough.

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Aug 01, 2012 Frank rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books-you-must-read, war

This was really a horrific account of daily life in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. Borowski's "This Way for the Gas" is actually a collection of stories which detail the brutality and gruesomeness of the Holocaust. Borowski was from Poland but he was not Jewish so he received better treatment in the camps and he tells the stories in a very matter-of-fact language. Some of the details portrayed by Borowski will leave you haunted. Ironically, Borowski committed suicide several years af...more

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Sep 14, 2012 Jessica Hatchigan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Tadeusz Borowski's This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen describes the author's actual experiences in Auschwitz. This collection of short stories is both belongs to a genre of fiction I would call in extremis. It is the fictional counterpart to nonfiction works such as Elie Wiesel's Night, and Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. Borowski's work rings with authenticity - not only about one of the darkest chapters of human history, but also about the ways people caught in a nightmarish...more

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Nov 30, 2010 Joe rated it 5 of 5 stars

You rarely encounter this kind of confessional testimony from the holocaust told with such pathos and humor. Only Primo Levi has accomplished this, but what makes Borowski's book on an equal plane is his sympathy. He was not Jewish and lived out the holocaust in relative comfort as a political prisoner. He had milk and meat for breakfast and played soccer while Jews were being gassed, and he tried to ignore it but couldn't. The love letter to his wife, who was also in the camp but in separate ho...more

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Mar 05, 2008 Jen Smith rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: holocaust

this book is required reading for High school students in Poland. I bought it at Auschwitz. very disturbing and very good.

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Jul 19, 2007 Joe rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: depress your Intro to Lit Class

Shelves: fiction

Seriously. This book is tremendously witty in the darkest sense possible.

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Nov 12, 2011 BarbaraNathalie rated it 5 of 5 stars

A brutal tale of survival marches into the mind of the reader almost as innocently as those who were led into the gas showers. People may ask how the Jews could have "gone" without a fight. Yet I know about the brutality, the inhumanity of the concentration camps, and still I read it. Tadeusz, the writing is so brilliantly intimate, so hopelessly and humanely askew, I feel we should be on a first name basis. His ability to survive is described as giving up the very essence of what we think it me...more

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About Tadeusz Borowski

Tadeusz Borowski was a Polish writer and journalist, and an Auschwitz and Dachau survivor. His books are recognized as classics of Polish post-war literature and had much influence in Central European society.

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“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.” — 12 people liked 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 as it has in the war, in this concentration camp. We were never taught how to give up hope, and this is why today we perish in gas chambers.” — 12 people liked it

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