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This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

Tadeusz Borowski,

Barbara Vedder (Editor/Translator),

Jan Kott (Introduction),

Michael Kandel (Translator)

4.16 · Rating details · 6,311 ratings · 424 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

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Paperback, 180 pages

Published November 26th 1992 by Penguin Classics (first published 1946)

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Feb 28, 2015 Paul Bryant rated it it was amazing

Shelves: holocaust-literature

I found this book very difficult to read. Not like Joyce or Proust or Faulkner, but because – when exactly do you read this? In the evening after a good dinner? No! Well, at bedtime then? Not unless you want nightmares.

I have read a few of these concentration camp memoirs, which, strangely insultingly, are classified as FICTION when they are, of course, the truth. But here, in the concentration camp world, reality reads like fiction, it is true.

Tadeusz Borowski writes with a heavy black humour ...more

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Oct 14, 2017 Violet wells rated it it was amazing

This is an account of Auschwitz, in the form of a series of first person short stories, from someone who is still begrimed and drenched in its depravity. Because he wrote it so soon after his experience Borowski has managed to put little if any distance between himself and what he’s describing. The tone of the book, perfectly captured in its title, is thus deeply disturbing. In fact it reads like a suicide note.

Concentration camp stories tend to focus on the fortitude and humanity of inmates. R This is an account of Auschwitz, in the form of a series of first person short stories, from someone who is still begrimed and drenched in its depravity. Because he wrote it so soon after his experience Borowski has managed to put little if any distance between himself and what he’s describing. The tone of the book, perfectly captured in its title, is thus deeply disturbing. In fact it reads like a suicide note.

Concentration camp stories tend to focus on the fortitude and humanity of inmates. Rarely do we see the darker side of what people did to survive. Rarely do we see the hierarchies among the inmates. Rarely do we see how successfully in their evil genius the Nazis stripped individuals of all moral sense. There’s the sense here that the inmates are like heroin addicts, survival their daily fix. They have their close inner circle of useful contacts and friends but are numbed to indifference about the plight of everyone outside that circle. They will even hurt these others if there’s something to gain, even if that something is merely a moment’s pleasure, the pleasure of accruing power. Power, as he states, is earned by the exploitation of others. People will always seek power and perhaps never more so than when they are made to feel powerless.

Perhaps the most memorable image in the book is of a game of football the narrator is playing while a transport arrives at the ramp. He registers the arrival of a train full of Hungarian Jews; the next moment his attention strays from the game the entire convoy has disappeared. “Between two throw-ins in a soccer game, right behind my back, three thousand people had been put to death.” He narrates this as though it is of little more emotional significance than an unloading process in a factory.

This book is as disturbed as it is disturbing. Borowski, you feel, deliberately eschewed all temptation to make his material palatable, subject in any way to reason. He wanted to speak from the ground, not from the meditated hindsight of a library or study. Probably what it does better than any other Holocaust book I’ve read is show the extreme difficulty of processing what happened in the camps or even finding the appropriate moral tone with which to talk about it. ...more

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Sep 08, 2019 BlackOxford rated it it was amazing

Shelves: slavic, historical-fiction, holocaust-modern-diaspora

The Dead Are Always Right

Tadeusz Borowski survived the horrors of Auschwitz, some of which are described in these stories, only to commit suicide. Despair is not an adequate explanation for such an act by a man who had experienced what he had. Neither, for me, is any other purely emotional reason.

So I have spent the better part of the last three days thinking and writing in an attempt to understand the rationale, the redeeming purpose perhaps, of his suicide. Surely, I surmised, his death, as t ...more

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Sep 29, 2017 Steven Godin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: holocaust, world-war-ll, czech-republic-poland, non-fiction, history

"Great columns of smoke rise from the crematoria and merge above into a huge black river which very slowly floats across the sky over Birkenau and disappears beyond the forests."

Naked, famished bodies, with sunken faces and deathly eyes, congregate on their wooden bunks.
Drenched in sweat from an unbearable heat they munch on stale bread with burning throats as dry as scorched sand. Tadeusz Borowski is one of them.

Outside the cattle carts are arriving, and that can only mean one thing. The unforg "Great columns of smoke rise from the crematoria and merge above into a huge black river which very slowly floats across the sky over Birkenau and disappears beyond the forests."

Naked, famished bodies, with sunken faces and deathly eyes, congregate on their wooden bunks.
Drenched in sweat from an unbearable heat they munch on stale bread with burning throats as dry as scorched sand. Tadeusz Borowski is one of them.

Outside the cattle carts are arriving, and that can only mean one thing. The unforgettable screams, the confusion, the madness, the horrendous stench of death. Men, women, children, infants. Welcome, your extermination awaits.

Brutal, ruthless, relentless, the cold eyes of the SS look on, their well oiled machine is in full working order, a machine spewed up onto the earth from the guts of hell...

There are 12 short accounts of Borowski's concentration camp experiences, Borowski was arrested by the Gestapo in Warsaw in 1942, shortly after publishing his debut book of poetry, before being sent to his new home. Starting with the chillingly named 'This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen' before ending with the sombre sounding 'The World of Stone'. This is without question one of the most powerful books I will ever read. But it's essential for it to be out there, as a record of the horrors of Auschwitz told from the perspective of someone who lived right at it's core. And it saddens me to think there are writers out there who try to make a quick buck by inventing a fictional work based around the Holocaust, knowing only to well as long as it's a tearjerker, it will most probably fly off the shelves, and even get a movie squeezed out if lucky. Sorry, I am not having it, and find it disrespectful to the dead and those who survived to tell the tale. Without the likes of Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi or Borowski himself, the world would be left with nothing more than guesswork. This is too important for that.

Make no bones about it, reading this hurt, deeply, right to the pit of my stomach, many will find it
too unsettling as it is not “lyrical” enough, not sympathetic enough. He offers us no theories, and not a single redeeming possibility. Unembellished, because, as he wrote, “there can be no beauty if it is paid for by human injustice, nor truth that passes over injustice, nor moral virtue that condones it.” Surely there was no need to ask for sympathy?. Perhaps that is why this book is less well known than others that followed. We do not like what's in front of us, it's too disturbing. Borowski wrote this book when the memories were fresh, not older looking back over time. He was still a young man and still desperately trying to find something to believe in. All he had was his nightmares, and he wrote them down. Nothing ever relieved his pain. Atrocity is piled upon atrocity For that he gets my greatest respects. He committed suicide in 1951, aged just 28.

Trough all the horror and carnage he writes considerably well, even in parts poetically, "Suddenly I see the camp as a haven of peace. It is true, others may be dying, but one is somehow still alive",
In the abundant of literature concerning the atrocity's of the 20th century, one rarely finds an account written from the point of view of an accessory to the crime. In frank, dispassionate prose he simply opens his mind, it's never pleasant, but then it was never going to be.

The precise reasons for his death are uncertain, as are many other details regarding this troubling witness to the Holocaust, but the dreadful power of his stories remains undiminished, It's a reading experience I will not forget, no matter how hard I try. ...more

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Dec 24, 2016 LeAnne: GeezerMom rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorite-books, buddy-reads

True horror is something that can only be swallowed in sips, lest we drown in its sorrow. You need to read these 150 pages. You, whomever you are. You will feel like the luckiest guy or gal ever after reading it, for you are alive and free and not being forced to do unforgiveable things.

The 20-something author, husband, and father-for-three days was once a poet and aspiring writer. As a Polish teenager, he was arrested and taken to work as a slave laborer at Auschwitz and Birkenau. At gunpoint, ...more

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Jan 01, 2010 Agnieszka rated it it was amazing

Shelves: own-a-copy, short-stories-and-novellas, holocaust, reviewed, 1001-books

This is not an ordinary book. This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen is a report of the man who survived. And this is a horrific testimony. Borowski’s prose, full of sharp and dispassionate descriptions, is so brutal and harsh, such dense that you barely can breath. At the same time Borowski’s writing is marked with strange indifference and some appalling calm while he tells about unimaginable atrocity and inhuman barbarism.

One of the most known stories is the title one when narrator parti This is not an ordinary book. This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen is a report of the man who survived. And this is a horrific testimony. Borowski’s prose, full of sharp and dispassionate descriptions, is so brutal and harsh, such dense that you barely can breath. At the same time Borowski’s writing is marked with strange indifference and some appalling calm while he tells about unimaginable atrocity and inhuman barbarism.

One of the most known stories is the title one when narrator participates in unloading new transport what always offers occasion to gain some goods . Bread, bacon, onion, milk and maybe a real champagne as muses Henri, the man who says that at least a milion people had passed through his hands. This unnerving story has something so ghastly unreal in itself but simultaneously we can sense, and it is almost palpable feeling, that everything's really happening. Newcomers are faltering in scorching heat , muddle-headed after several days in crowded wagons , completely unaware what will happen to them.
And on the other side – camp prisoners, these chosen ones, to take their luggage, to separate value things, to live. And when you think it is over you can read for several days the entire camp will live off this transport. For several days the entire camp will talk about “Sosnowiec-Bedzin”. “Sosnowiec-Bedzin” was a good, rich transport.

Or another story titled People who walked on. There is a scene I find particularly shocking, when prisoners were playing football, yes, there was a life in Auschwitz too, while another transport arrived and Borowski knocks you out with single paragraph between two throw-ins in a soccer game, right behind my back, three thousand people had been put to death.

I’m thinking about Borowski’s life in Auschwitz, then Dachau and after camp. I’m wondering why he get involved later, like many other Polish writers, into communistic propaganda. Why he found communism so seductive. I’m trying to imagine myself on his place and I can’t. Also his death, pills and, oh irony, gas. It’s such a shame that evil system caught up with him finally. Though I do not know which one it was. Malaparte said once it is a shameful thing to win a war. And to survive ?

...more

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Aug 21, 2017 Carol rated it it was amazing

Shelves: owned-book, holocaust

Disturbing in the same way that the foreign film, "Son of Saul" was for me. It was unbearable to read more than a chapter or two at one time. The blurb on my book jacket conveys my thoughts perfectly.

"...This collection of concentration camp stories shows atrocious war crimes becoming an unremarkable part of a daily routine. Prisoners eat, work, sleep, and fall in love a few yards from where other prisoners are systematically slaughtered. The will to survive overrides compassion, and the line be ...more

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Jan 10, 2008 Leah rated it it was amazing

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

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 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.
...more

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Aug 02, 2015 Greta G rated it really liked it

Shelves: owned-in-english, memoir, holocaust-and-nazism

This one is difficult to rate. Not all the stories did engage me on a same level.
I would definitely give a 5 for the title story. It's a unique testimony about prisoners unloading an incoming Transport. It's powerful and haunting :
"The bolts crack, the doors fall open. A wave of fresh air rushes inside the train. People...inhumanly crammed, buried under incredible heaps of luggage, suitcases, trunks, packages, crates, bundles of every description (everything that had been their past and was to ...more

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May 18, 2013 E. G. rated it it was amazing

Shelves: translated, poland, 5-star, fiction, own

Translator's Note
Introduction

--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
--The World of Stone ...more

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Apr 04, 2011 Anne rated it it was amazing

Shelves: jewish, 1001-books, holocaust, historical-fiction, non-fiction

This book made me feel and understand the horrors of Auschwitz like no other book I've read. Borowski is able to make the reader feel how very mundane and acceptable killing and torture became to the inmates. He uses a mix of humor and stark, in-your-face descriptions in relating his stories of camp life and of the atrocities. This puts the reader in the position of smiling and cringing at one and the same time. For instance, Inmates playing a soccer game are having a good time, but don't bat at ...more

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Nov 12, 2014 Ben Winch rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 5-stars, mainland-european, polish

A mental-health episode involving too large a dose of mushrooms sobered me recently when I made a call (my first) to “000”. A dose of sheer panic mixed with latent paranoia convinced me I might die here, in a tiny town in country New South Wales where I “retreat”/housesit and look after the dog. In the aftermath, having bartered (or so it seemed) with two starched-uniformed paramedics for my freedom (“Call if you need us,” they said as they left, “but next time you don’t get a choice about comin ...more

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Dec 14, 2018 ~Bookishly~ rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

"This way for the gas ladies and gentlemen" is a book that I'd been wanting to read for a while. When a book is described as difficult reading, I feel like I have some kind of duty to read this book. We will never truly know what these people suffered in those inhumane conditions but we can pick up the writing that they left us, so we may learn from that and ensure that nothing like that ever happens again.
Not all the stories engaged me on the same level, but either way, I do think that the titl ...more

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Jul 21, 2015 [P] rated it really liked it

For the last couple of years, since I been trying to quit smoking, I have taken to carrying around with me during the day whatever book I am currently reading, fitting in a few pages during my breaks at work. Often people will peer at the cover, mutter the title to themselves, and then carry on with their own business. The other day a friend of mine came over to the table at which I was sitting, picked up This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, turned it over, read the title and winced. I th ...more

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Jan 01, 2017 Ned rated it really liked it

Told from the vantage of a very young, Polish, political prisoner, this one was unique. Having read a fair bit of holocaust literature, what separates this is that it has no Jewish point of view at all, and does not decry the evils of the Nazi targeting this genocide. The other unusual feature of this story is that it was written shortly after the events themselves. Without the benefit of hindsight and perspective, the entire context is missing from this narrative. In fact, the horrors are mostl Told from the vantage of a very young, Polish, political prisoner, this one was unique. Having read a fair bit of holocaust literature, what separates this is that it has no Jewish point of view at all, and does not decry the evils of the Nazi targeting this genocide. The other unusual feature of this story is that it was written shortly after the events themselves. Without the benefit of hindsight and perspective, the entire context is missing from this narrative. In fact, the horrors are mostly described without emotion, such as observed post-war in soldiers so numbed that the extreme and perverse for them has become commonplace. A bizarre result is that the descriptions are rendered with clear, artistic style and are detailed and factual. Great writing focuses on detail, and Borowski as an aspiring poet writes beautifully. Without the emotion, however, this was a disconcerting read. The sheer volume and mechanized human destruction is nearly unbelievable, but entirely true from my other readings. For example, the constant stream of body to body crammed full railway cars arriving and depositing the humans with all their wealth is efficiently razed and humans split according to sexual desirability and workability. The “workers” are tattooed with serial numbers (in the millions), and those of no value to the Reich are stripped and sent to the crematorium. It’s shocking that the sheer numbers did not revolt over their relatively few guards, but these people were deceived into believing they were going to be incarcerated temporarily, hence their early possessions were on their persons. The workers, mostly bribed with cheap favors, were prisoners themselves, who stripped everything of value into a warehouse – jewelry, etc… anything of worth. Then the hoards (and they were in the thousands) were stripped naked (men, women, children, old and young alike) for shower, at which point they were locked in and gassed. Within 20 minutes they were all dead, the floor dropped and the corpses burned in massive ovens. Apparently the 4 main buildings held 5000 each and therefore 20,000 at a time could be literally converted to ash within hours. The firepower and processing of human flesh and water (we are 90% such) and fat must have been horrific beyond imagining. Yet millions were killed thusly in 2-3 years time.

So our “survivor” documents this all, the local brothel of prisoners, the petty exchanges, the bartering and the illness and the politics of this enormous camp, in incredible detail. The author survives, being non-Jewish and of relatively minor threat to the Reich, only to find himself displaced in Germany after the war was won, again a prisoner unable or unwilling to return to his homeland, which has become a communist society with its own treachery.

I learned that the town Auschwitz itself could see the prisoners, and the author having found his way into a better job in the hospital, feels comfort in this part of the camp compared to the shabby and fatal Birkenau killing factory, observes from his new vantage (p 100): “What delightful days: no roll-call, no duties to perform. The entire camp stands at attention, but we, the lucky spectators from another planet, lean out of the window and gaze at the world. The people smile at us, we smile at the people, they call us ‘Comrades from Birkenau’, with a touch of pity- our lot being so miserable- and a touch of guilt-theirs being so fortunate. The view from the window is almost pastoral- not one cremo in sight. These people over here are crazy about Aushchwitz. ‘Auschwitz, our home…’ they say with pride.”
The author, toward the end, begins to understand his place in the dynamic, after having been released (p 168): “…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 tivial reasons; he will commit them first out of duty, then from habit, and finally- for pleasure….We believe neither in the morality of man, nor themorality of systems. In German cities the store windows are filled with books and religious objects, but the smoke from the crematoria still hovers above the forests…”

Alas, our author, shortly after his escape and still a young man, can’t handle it and on the eve of committing suicide (p 180): “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 eratz 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 aI 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 chiseled out of stone.” The despair cannot be overcome by our author, he is ruined forever by what he has seen, and he does not escape it ultimately. Tragic, powerful. These horrors can hardly be imagined, but, they were not imaginable even then, not so very long ago, really… we owe it to ourselves to never let this tragedy unfold again. But even saying that gives me dread, as it can happen again.

I finished this an hour before midnight in the last day of 2016.
...more

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Jun 26, 2017 K.D. Absolutely rated it it was amazing

Recommended to K.D. by: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

Shelves: polish, holocaust, war, 1001-core, race

This book is so powerful it can make you vomit while reading.

This a holocaust book. I have read so many of these but this one is the most brutal in terms of vividly describing the scenes in the concentration camp - Auschwitz. I would not say that this is bereft of the haunting prose of say W. G. Sebald's "Austerlitz", the intriguing thesis of Viktor E. Frankl's "The Man's Search for Meaning" or the palpable honesty of Elie Wiesel's "Night". (Note: the most popular Holocaust book by Anne Frank, " This book is so powerful it can make you vomit while reading.

This a holocaust book. I have read so many of these but this one is the most brutal in terms of vividly describing the scenes in the concentration camp - Auschwitz. I would not say that this is bereft of the haunting prose of say W. G. Sebald's "Austerlitz", the intriguing thesis of Viktor E. Frankl's "The Man's Search for Meaning" or the palpable honesty of Elie Wiesel's "Night". (Note: the most popular Holocaust book by Anne Frank, "The Diary of a Young Girl" has no concentration camp scene). In fact, all of those ingredients are in this book by Borowski. Not even Steven Spielberg in his famous movie, "Schindler's List" compares to what I felt while reading this book. Many a times while reading when I thought I could smell the blood and the rotten brains and entrails or imagine seeing lice crawling on the pages of the book. I thought I saw black chimney smoke coming out from the window yesterday while I was about to finish this. There are so memorable scenes that almost made me cry and actually made me grit my teeth. Now I have painful blisters on my inner lip due to actually biting my lips in desperation and sorrow for the victims of the holocaust mostly of which were gassed naked inside the chamber.

I actually pick a Holocaust book whenever I have a problem. Or maybe I a worrying about something. Or maybe I am depressed. Holocaust books are eye-opener: my problem is nothing compared with how the victims suffered from the hands of the Nazis or Aryans or even fellow Jews who are happened to be given some assignments in the concentration camps. This kind of book will make you be thankful that we were not among those who were persecuted because of religion.

The best part in Borowski's narration is that story where thousands of naked women, old men, children are walking to the gas chamber. Non-stop, trains after trains. They are silent. No one's fighting. No one's questioning their fate. They know where they are going. Why? Borowski says: because they hope that by what they are doing, they are giving us, the living one thing: HOPE that things will change. That there will never be another Holocaust.

Brilliant writing. Beautifully written yet very depressing. ...more

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Aug 26, 2014 Dhanaraj Rajan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: east-european-lit, history, literature, short-stories

There are many ways I could write a review for this book. But I limit myself to some basic observations and recommend it highly to each and everyone who has not yet read it.

As I read the book (a collection of concentration camp stories) I was remembered of another book that I had read earlier. That is Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz. Primo Levi had originally titled it as: IF THIS WERE THE MAN. The similarities in both the books are very many.

Both of them were the concentration camp prisoners ...more

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Sep 25, 2013 Petra rated it it was amazing

Borowski's experiences are horrendous. His writing is superb. With few words and little emotion he manages to bring the horror of the concentration camp experience into these pages. His writing style, detached, shows how man had to separate himself in order to live day to day under these horrific conditions.
Throughout, I thought I could feel his guilt for having survived. Perhaps I'm reading things into Borowski's words. He sounds so haunted.
This is probably as close as we can get to finding o ...more

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Aug 09, 2007 Eric rated it liked it

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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May 16, 2012 Mike rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: anyone

Shelves: embedded-in-brain, shorts

These semi-autobiographical stories are incredibly difficult to read; the mind, at least the sane mind, jerks backward from them like a panicked, rearing horse. The book should be read not only because the writing is superb, but because I don’t know of any other way to stand with the victims other than by reading about them, in this book and others, and forcing myself to see them as wide-eyed as I can, something I feel compelled to do, even if such make-believe solidarity is futile and of no ben ...more

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Aug 27, 2016 Jon Nakapalau rated it it was amazing

Shelves: war, nazi-germany, favorites

Into an abyss that engulfs everything a man tries to hold onto the tattered remnants of his humanity. Each day he must fight for every strand that is left and try to bind the courage in his soul to make it through one more day.

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Oct 13, 2018 Antonomasia rated it really liked it

Shelves: biography-and-memoir, short-stories, poland, germany, paper, decade-1940s, 2018, 1001-books

Mostly skimmed, over the course of two or three hours, because it was either that or never reading it.

I'd always been scared of this book, but, catching up on classic Polish literature (albeit books not about the war whenever possible), the book's brevity, and Borowski's place as one of the author case studies in The Captive Mind made me have a go. I read the introduction a couple of days ago - I like introductions in their own right - and figured that actually, I'd been right all along, I woul ...more

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Jan 06, 2010 David rated it it was amazing

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, 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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Dec 21, 2016 Diane Barnes rated it really liked it

Shelves: a-team-group-reads

Impossible to do justice to this book in a review. A slim volume of 180 pages that takes a while to read because of the horror of Auschwitz, conveyed in such simple language that gives a sense of trying to survive under the constant smoke and ash from the ovens. Not an easy read, but it is not fiction. Written by a survivor who committed suicide in 1951.

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Feb 14, 2017 Neil Strauss rated it it was amazing

I began my book Emergency with a quote from this book: “There is no crime a man will not commit to save himself.” Yet I’d never read it. I should have. The book is an anthology of short stories by the Polish poet Tadeusz Borowski, all based on his real-life experiences in Auschwitz, and other Nazi prisons and concentration camps, as a Polish political prisoner. It is unlike anything I’ve read before on the subject, because the focus is not so much on the brutality of the SS guards, but on the pr ...more

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Jul 26, 2014 Czarny Pies rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Anyone curious about the Nazi Death Camps

Recommended to Czarny by: It was a gift from Marek Dabrowski

Shelves: polish-lit

Tadeusz Borowski contributed articles, stories and poems to underground Polish publications during World War II which caused him to be arrested by the Gestapo in February 1943 and sent to Auschwitz were he spent almost two years before being transferred to Dachau.

Borowski factual seemingly detached point of view can cause the reader to question Borowski's basic humanity. However, in retrospect it appears that Borowski was profoundly traumatized. Initially he took refuge in the belief that the a ...more

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Jun 09, 2017 Michael Perkins rated it it was amazing

The most poignant book on this topic I've read since "Night;" and is a kind of companion volume to that book. The toughest part for me was the title story, where the reader is greeted with the worst of it right away. The question always remains: how could the captors have been so monstrous to the inmates? And on a lesser level, the inmates to each other?

As for the former question, one modern historian cites what he calls "the cultivation of hatred" that happened in the latter part of 19th centu The most poignant book on this topic I've read since "Night;" and is a kind of companion volume to that book. The toughest part for me was the title story, where the reader is greeted with the worst of it right away. The question always remains: how could the captors have been so monstrous to the inmates? And on a lesser level, the inmates to each other?

As for the former question, one modern historian cites what he calls "the cultivation of hatred" that happened in the latter part of 19th century in Europe and set the table for the atrocities of both world wars in the next century. Social darwinism was championed and rationalized by scientists and philosophers alike. It fed into racism, aryanism, anti-semitism and eugenics. As soon as any human was regarded as less than human, then the door was opened for the most heinous abuses.

As far as the second question, we are back to Jekyl & Hyde, the conflicting natures in people, light and dark. It's actually an old Russian concept, well articulated by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his "Gulag Archipelago"....."the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts."

Under certain circumstances, the worst can come out in any person and hearts can be hardened against tragedy and injustice.

Interesting observation by Eric Hoffer (The True Believer) on this situation....

"The thirty thousand hopeless people in the concentration camp of Buchenwald did not develop any form of united action, nor did they manifest any readiness for self-sacrifice. There was more greed and ruthless selfishness there than in the greediest and most corrupt of free societies."

“Instead of studying the way in which they could best help each other they used all their ingenuity to dominate and oppress each other.” (Arthur Koestler)

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The author of this book is one of four profiled in detail, under the moniker "Beta the Disappointed Love" in Czesław Miłosz"s brilliant book "The Captive Mind." Miłosz quotes some passages from "This Way for the Gas" in his profile.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ...more

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Feb 22, 2009 Evan rated it it was amazing

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

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 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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Jan 24, 2011 Aaron Wolfson rated it it was amazing

Shelves: shoah, wwii, crime, favorites, re-read, horror, fiction, own, historical-fiction

In another world, if Borowski had completely made up these stories, we would call him a darkly mad genius, one of the most creative fiction writers of the 20th century. But no: these stories are all too real.

Tadeusz Borowski was born in 1922. In 1943, he was sent to Auschwitz. In 1945, he was liberated at Dachau. He killed himself in 1951 -- he opened a gas valve.

These stories are based on Borowski's experiences, and they are among the most haunting testaments ever recorded to human cruelty. It ...more

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Nov 02, 2011 Christine rated it it was amazing

Shelves: historical-wwii, literature-poland

Just wow. This should be more widely read than it is.

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About Tadeusz Borowski

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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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