This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

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 (soccer) 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 storytelling. Equally compelling are stories that describe the 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 ext

Will you enjoy reading this book? The answer is no. But if you were to ask me if you should read this book then I would have to say absolutely. Borowski wrote with an honesty that I found amazing. He gave me a small window to look through and see what my grandparents might have gone through. This book while often shocking and always disturbing allows a little understanding into what life was like inside the death camps. Not for enjoyment but education.

Borowski's account of life in Aushcwitz is a classic. The brutality, inhumanity, and gruesome daily life in the hell-on-earth that was the Holocaust is matter-of-factly, even non-chalantly described and recounted in _This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen_. Little wonder the author put his own head in a gas oven in the years following his experiences. The images are haunting. But what I found to be most disturbing was the simple language Borowski used in retelling his experiences. Borowski, a Pole, lived separately from the Jews who were daily incenerated. And while his life was unimaginably difficult, by some measure it was better than that of the Jews. A sense of guilt - call it survivors guilt, or regret, or perhaps at its most elemental level, deep and profound sadness - permeates the book, as it should. It is a remarkable read, profound and stunning. Highly recommended.

Tadeusz Borowski was a teenager when the Nazis invaded Poland. He was eventually arrested by the Nazis for particpating in the underground press (he had a copy of BRAVE NEW WORLD in his pocket at the time he was searched), and sent to Auschwitz. His girlfriend was also sent to Auschwitz. Borowski wrote a cycle of stories that spanned Poland under Nazi occupation, the experience of Auschwitz, and his travels after the war, to France, where he felt like a "walking ghost" amongst the exiles, and finally his return to Poland. He wrote a cycle of stories about these experiences published in two volumes in Polish, FAREWELL TO MARIA and WORLD OF STONE. His girlfriend had also survived Auschwitz and went to Sweden after the war. Borowski persuaded her to return to Poland and marry him. But life did not go well for Borowski. After he wrote his two volumes of stories, he, like many other young Poles, decided that communism might be the best thing for Poland, and subjugated his brilliant writing talent to churning out reams of "socialist realism" for the communists. But he was depressed and he was drinking heavily. When a close friend of his was tortured by the communists, he became completely disillusioned with the communists. One night in 1951, after visiting his young wife in the hospital, who was soon to give birth to their first child, he went home and killed himself. What lives on, however, are the two marvelous books of stories, among the finest ever written, detailing in a quiet, subdued way (much like the other mastepiece of man's inhumanity to man in the communist GULAG, Shalamov's KOLYMA TALES) the world he'd experienced. Unfortunately, currently only a portion of Borowski's stories are available in English translation, the ones dealing with Auschwitz, under the title, THIS WAY FOR THE GAS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. These are fine, fine stories. Once read, they are unforgettable. I only hope that the complete FAREWELL TO MARIA and WORLD OF STONE will be issued in English translation soon.

This book has the truth on its side, and it shows. Nothing is dramatized or sentimentalized. These tales do not even have an undercurrent of rage. With a matter-of-fact style that says more than a diatribe, these horrific - utterly horrific - accounts of life in a death camp imprint themselves on your psyche and refuse to go away. But, that is a good thing.