This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski is one of many books that are considered Holocaust literature. Most of these books focus on the experiences of those who survived, thus giving us proof that such a monstrosity actually occurred. The stories that are told in these books is so vile that they are sometimes taken as works of literature and that only. This is because the accounts that are spoken about in these books are unthinkable to the sane human mind, and they seem totally made up, even though they aren’t. With all of the different experiences come the differing attitudes towards the Holocaust. Borowski’s overall attitude was one of total desperation. He believed that in order to survive, people had to leave behind everything that they deemed “normal.” Meaning, they had to do whatever it took to live, thus detaching themselves from morality, and those who stayed true to the morals that they once held on to outside of the camps were always the ones who did not survive long enough to tell the tale.
The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored murder of six million Jews by Adolf Hitler and the rest of the Nazi Regime. In January 1933, the Nazis came into power, spreading the belief that Germans were “racially superior” and that the Jews—whom they deemed “inferior”—were a threat to the German racial community. The government publically displayed their racism on posters, in movies, on the radio and even in the classrooms. They also had the support of German scientists who believed that humanity could be improved by limiting the reproduction of races that they thought was inferior. These scientists were permitted to perform sterilizations on Jews and other minorities. Hitler referred to the Jewish people as “poisonous” and basically called them moochers. Even though they were openly racist towards these ethnic groups, the Nazis were always using euphemisms to disguise the real motives behind their crimes, and this is how by 1945, the Germans and their collaborators got away with killing nearly two out of every three Jews as a part of the “Final Solution,” a Nazi policy implemented to murder the Jews of Europe.
In the early years of the Nazi regime, the government established “ghettos.” Ghettos were parts of numerous cities in Europe in which minorities were forced to live. Living conditions in these areas were miserable. There were three types of ghettos: closed, open and destruction. Walls or fences with barbed wire closed off closed ghettos, so that it was difficult for the inhabitants to escape. Open ghettos had no enclosing structures, but there were various restrictions that regulated the entering and leaving from these areas. Destruction ghettos served as tightly sealed and segregated living quarters that existed between two and six weeks before the Jews were shipped off to concentration camps, for example Auschwitz and Dachau, in an effort to apprehend “offenders” of their political and ideological beliefs. Some of these so-called offenders were real, but Hitler’s paranoia caused him to imagine a lot of them. Auschwitz was the largest concentration camp complex. It included three main camps: a prison camp, an extermination camp and a slave-labor camp, all three being used for forced labor, and one simultaneously serving as a killing center. It is estimated that the Nazis deported at least 1.3 million people to the camp, and of these people, camp authorities murdered approximately 1.1 million. The Dachau concentration camp was started in March 1933. It was the first concentration camp established by the Nazi government.
Although many people believe or were taught that the Jews were the only victims of the Holocaust, there were other groups that were targeted as well. Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the Polish—just to name a few—were exterminated along with Jews. When people were not immediately exterminated, they were sent to work in concentration camps. For these people, the ability to work meant the possibility of survival, but many of them later died of malnutrition, illness, exhaustion and brutal treatment.
This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen is a collection of stories based on Borowski’s own experiences of being a political prisoner in Auschwitz and Dachau. In a style that is unsparingly ruthless and transparent, he describes a world where the will to live surpasses empathy for others. Prisoners are forced to eat, work, and sleep where others were slaughtered. In his stories, Borowski describes the time in his existence when the value of human life was reduced to a second bowl of soup, an extra blanket, or shoes with thicker soles. Because this book is based on the author’s firsthand accounts of what happened inside of the concentration camps during the Holocaust, it directly correlates with the history of the German government and their feelings towards other races and the literature’s historical accuracy.
The book begins with a typical day at Auschwitz. The story is told through the eyes of a Polish prisoner who worked for the camp, as Borowski was. One of the biggest tasks that the workers were given was to unload Jews from cattle cars and send them to the gas chamber. Along the way, the Jews would collect things such as food and clothing. The narrator is introduced to Henri, a Communist worker, while they are lying in their quarters waiting for the next car to get to the camp. Borowski goes on to write about how the transports were important to the inmates because they were crucial to their survival. When the prison guards would turn their backs, the prisoners would take and place belongings from the Jews in their own personal piles so that they had more food and a change of clothing. This story is quite horrific in the sense that the workers knew exactly what the Jews were in for, but in order to save their own existence, they had to do what they were told to do; which meant they were to knowingly send people to their deaths and take what they left behind.
There is a moment at the ramp of Auschwitz where the narrator asks Henri if they are good people. Instead of feeling pity towards the Jews, the narrator becomes angry with them because he believes that it is at the fault of the Jews that he has to be a part of something so inhumane, so dreadful. As the story progresses, we can see that both his mental and physical state are in turmoil. There is one instance where the narrator feels nauseous and then after several transports, he vomits. This is significant because it shows that although he has spent so much time becoming emotionally detached, he is still human.
Literature affects us in ways that straight history cannot. It uses devices to describe an event in such detail that someone who was not there is able to capture the event and experience it in a way that a history book could not. Even though it is quite impossible for those who did not experience the Holocaust for themselves to know what it was like, literature helps to describe the experiences of those who were there in a way that stirs up the souls of the readers, bringing awareness of the event and identification with the survivors. It is because of Holocaust literature that we are able to keep these memories alive. Even though this generation is the last that will be able to directly hear from these survivors, their memoirs preserve the horrors of what they so bravely endure. In Borowski’s case, though the characters are fictional, the events, thoughts and feelings that occur in the book are very much real. We are able to imagine the hatred that the Germans had for these minority groups, specifically the Jews, and how they were using other minority groups to carry out their devious plan to annihilate anyone who they believed to be lesser. Because of his willingness, along with many others, to share what it was like inside of these death camps, the memory of such a vicious occurrence is kept alive so that we can work towards maintaining the mindset of never letting something like this happen again.