This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)

In the annals of holocaust literature, this is one of the more unflinching collection of death camp stories, as it depicts the stark reality of the desperate situation of those ensconced in concentration camps, where the final solution was frantically put into play. The stories are of the unimaginable and the nearly unendurable, replete with the inherent pathos of the situation of the truly desperate. It is shows the desensitization that takes place in order for one to survive the horrors of a death camp. It is an unapologetic dissertation of what camp life was truly like for those for whom surviving was the bottom line. It also shows how the Jewish people were clearly singled out for mass extermination.

The author himself survived two death camps, Auschwitz and Dachau, where he had been imprisoned from 1943 to 1945, as a young man in his early twenties. Born in the Ukraine in 1922 to Polish parents who spent time in Siberian labor camps, the author was no stranger to hardship. Yet, he was little prepared for man's inhumanity to man. His time in the death camps was to form an indelible impression on him, resulting in this collection of stories, which chronicle man's inhumanity to man. It shows how camp culture made all those within its sphere participants in its reign of terror and in the final solution. In the end, having survived the unimaginable, the author committed suicide in 1951, choosing to gas himself to death. The irony inherent in his choice of death is not lost upon the discerning reader.

Remembrance of things past (33/34 people found this helpful)

Imre Kertesz, a concentration camp survivor and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature often asks in his work: is there life after Auschwitz? Can one live with the ineffable guilt that accompanies survival against all odds? For Borowski the answer appears to be no. On July 1, 1951, at age 29, Tadeusz Borowski opened a gas valve, put his head in an oven and took his life. There is no small amount of irony in the fact that after escaping the gas of Auschwitz and Dachau Borowski would end his life in this manner.

Borowski was born in Soviet occupied Ukraine to Polish parents. His father was sent to a Soviet work camp, building the White Sea Canal, but was released in an exchange of prisoners with Poland. Upon his father's release, the family settled in Warsaw. Although not Jewish, Borowski was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 for subversive activities when he was caught surreptitiously printing his own poetry. He spent the rest of the war in Auschwitz and Dachau. The first piece of luck or fate that saved his life was the decision by the Nazis to stop exterminating non-Jewish prisoners two weeks before Borowski's arrival.

The series of stories contained in This Way for the Gas are all written in the voice of one prisoner, Tadeusz. Not unexpectedly the stories appear to be loosely autobiographical. Borowski's writing is not overloaded with emotion. It is descriptive and matter of fact. The day-to-day tone of the writing, writing that describes death and deprivation as normal events adds an emotional impact to the stories.

For example, in one scene the prisoner Tadeusz describes a football match played by the prisoners. He served as goalkeeper and described his walk to retrieve a ball that was kicked way over the net. As he walks to the ball he sees through the barbed wire fence truckloads of prisoners being herded through the gas chambers. Later in the match he has to retrieve another ball. As he returns to the goal he matter-of-factly estimates that 5,000 prisoners have been gassed between his retrieving the two balls. It is powerful story.

Equally compelling are stories that describe that numerous decisions Tadeusz and his fellow prisoners made every day in order to survive. Taking clothes from the luggage of prisoners destined for the gas in order to trade the clothes for bread. People fight for survival and despite a certain ethical code amongst prisoners (there are some things even the dying won't do) they all know that the steps they take to survive often means that someone else will perish. Borowski does not flinch from subjecting his alter ego and his fellow prisoners to a critical self-examination of these choices. Both Borowski and his narrator survived Auschwitz. But as you can see from these flawlessly executed stories the question of how much of one's humanity remains is a difficult question. The emaciated bodies of the survivors could often be repaired. But the sense of a moral inner flame extinguished by the acts required for survival is not so easily relit. The reader cannot help but wonder whether the lingering impact of those choices in Auschwitz somehow invariably led to the choice he made in July 1951.

Tadeusz Borowski's "This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen" is a wonderful example of how fiction can portray the horrors of genocide with an emotional clarity that non-fiction sometimes lacks. It ranks with Varlam Shalamov's Kolyma Tales (the Gulag) as a monumental piece of remembrance presented in the form of sort stories, vignettes of life in a place with little mercy and less humanity. They each stand as stark testimony, even though they are works of literature and not history, to the "evil that men do."

Upon finishing "This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentleman" I found myself wanting to repeat the words "never again" as a refrain. Yet upon reflection one looks at subsequent world events: Bosnia, Cambodia, Chechnya, Sudan, and Rwanda (among others) and asks whether humanity makes the phrase "never again" a futile gesture. It has been said that those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it. Anyone who reads Borowski testament will long remember the prose that keeps us from forgetting.

Difficult but rewarding (11/13 people found this helpful)

Taduez Borowski's short stories of life in Auschwitz Birkenau are startling in their casualness, until one realises this is a front hiding the deep pain and anguish underneath. It was not possible to survive without accepting some moral compromises, and these tales, give occasional glimpses of the torment of the victim who is debased by the system.
On a more superficial level, there is a feel of what life must have been like, with the incidental horrors of the concentration camp marching alongside the everyday life of eating, working, and resting.
I have only given this book three stars because I found the stories difficult to follow and was never sure of the identity of the narrator (unlike, for instance, Primo Levi's work). However, don't let this put you off reading the book - there are frequent unforgettable passages.

Borowski's book is an essential read (24/25 people found this helpful)

Anyone who has more than a passing interest in Holocaust history should read this slender volume of stories; described as some of the finest ever written about Auschwitz. Seen through the eyes of Kapo Tadek, a Polish functionary prisoner, the tales engage the reader and challenge them to understand the concentration camp world on its terms. The stories are often cinematic in their scope and depiction and Borowski uses irony, pastoral descriptions and powerful characterisations suchs as Abbie and Moise (who finds family pictures after he sends his father to the gas chamber) to evoke the realities of Auschwitz. The narrative Borowski creates never allows the reader to sit in judgement on his characters and he reveals the inversion of morality and ethics necessary to survive. He also makes explicit the connection between Auschwitz and the world that fostered and allowed. it. A book that will change the way you think about the world and will challenge everything you think you know about the Holocaust.

A valuable testimony from an unusual perspective (31/31 people found this helpful)

Borowski's terrifying and occasionally brilliant short stories differ from many high-profile holocaust memoirs in some important ways. The astonishment and outrage at the perpetration of genocide experienced by Jewish survivors and memoir-writers is shared by the author and his narrator, but mediated by the urbane, non-Jewish Borowksi's tight control of his material, and his narrator's pragmatic view of life in the camps, as one of the small group of people who could "look forward" to ongoing existence, and, possibly, ultimate survival. Spared from routine extermination by a change in policy on "Aryan" executions, Borowksi's "fresh" viewpoint on Auschwitz is further enhanced by the fact that the stories were published immediately after the war, before the Holocaust attained its current cultural and historical status.

This slight yet multi-layered shift in perspective with respect to other Holocaust literature lends an unpleasant feeling to some of the early stories. We, as readers, are conditioned in our responses, and are unsettled by the detailed and ongoing narrative of camp life, in which the inmates themselves, including the narrator, cheat and commit acts of violence as a matter of routine. For the narrator and many of his companions, the immediate threat of death is kept at bay by a mixture of luck, resourcefulness and complicity. The guilt that arose out of this complicity (sometimes referred to as "survivor guilt", but in this case much more complicated and deep-rooted than that) is discusssed somewhat obliquely in Jan Kott's introduction to the Penguin edition (re-read the introduction after finishing the first few stories - it will make much more sense).

Perhaps the ultimate achievement of the Nazis' program of debasement and dehumanization was to ensure that the victims themselves participated in the atrocities. An acture awareness of this will have remained with Borowski until his untimely death by his own hand in post-war, communist-era Poland. We can only guess at the role his own feelings of guilt may have played in his suicide.

These stories are his legacy: his detachment and cool description, and seemingly effortless control of the form in the very shortest of the stories, overcome the limitations of an occasionally clunking translation to leave a priceless testimony that should be read by anybody with an interest in the Holocaust, and all those with a concern for how differences in historical and literary perspective can produce valuable insights and worthwhile literature.

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)

Tadeusz Borowski

Reader Reviews:

TALES FROM THE DARK SIDE... (24/24 people found this helpful)

Remembrance of things past (33/34 people found this helpful)

Difficult but rewarding (11/13 people found this helpful)

Borowski's book is an essential read (24/25 people found this helpful)

A valuable testimony from an unusual perspective (31/31 people found this helpful)

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