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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 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 blanket or the luxury of a pair of shoes with thick soles, and where the line between normality and abnormality vanishes. Published in Poland after the Second World War, these stories constitute a masterwork of world literature. If you have seen the documentaries of History channel on these concentration camps, you will know that what Borowski has written is True events. If you have seen the documentaries of History channel on these concentration camps, you will know that what Borowski has written is absolutely true.

It seems fantastic and surreal to us because we cannot imagine that someone might have gone through such hardships and torture. But it happened. All survivors of these camps have testified to the stories. Raw footage of these camps are also available. You will have to search the archives of History channel. It is pretty extensive. I found this book very difficult to read.

Borowski, Tadeusz. [1959] “Prosze panstwa do gazu,” “Ludzie, ktorzy szli,” “U nas w Auschwitzu,” in. Wybor Opowiadan.. -70; 107-20; 68-106 respectively (Warsaw: Kama);English translation published in 1976 as This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, translated by Barbara Vedder (New York: Penguin). Borowski and J. Borwein, Dictionary of mathematics, Collins. Weisstein, CRC concise encyclopaedia of mathematics, Chapman and Hall (1999). Hillrise, 12 Tennyson Road, Worthing, Sussex BN11 4BY. An imperfect issue. No feature on perfect numbers for Math Gaz 496? Then there's always.

Not like Joyce or Proust or Faulkner, but because – when exactly do you read this? In the evening after a good dinner? 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 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? 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 about Auschwitz, which some may find almost unbearable. I don’t have so much of a problem reading the cold histories of the theory and practice of hell, as it has been called. I now have a certain level of knowledge.

I can distinguish between the wildcat camps of 1937-39, the political prisoner camps like Dachau, the work camps like Mauthausen, and the terminal points of the three extermination camps Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor, which really should be much more famous than they are. (But their fate was to exist very temporarily, for a year or 18 months, then to be bulldozed, and for the ground to be ploughed, and tilled, and for a farmhouse to be built and a family installed there who were to say they had farmed the land of Belzec for generations.

Unlike the camps which were liberated, and therefore photographed. No photos of Belzec!) And I can compare all those to the empire that was Auschwitz. So the nuts and bolts of the holocaust have become well known to me over the years. Reading the stories of one who was there and was able to write after liberation, that’s another thing.

It is jolting and upsetting. It’s someone real. The first jolt comes on the third page of the title story (and what a title, surely one of the greatest titles in literature).

Here we have the bantering conversation of some of the men working on the “Canada” team. These were prisoners whose job was to get the Jews out of the cattle trucks, up the ramps and off to the crematoria. (“All these thousands flow along like water from an open tap” he says.) Once that was done they picked up all the luggage which the Jews could not, of course, take with them. In this luggage was a whole lot of food – good stuff too, wine, cured meat, sausage, cheese, you name it.

The Canada team were able to “organise” some of this stuff back to their barracks, and there they dined well. They also had their pick of the clothes in the luggage, so they dressed pretty well too. Imagine, prisoners living well at Auschwitz! It is almost over. The dead are being cleared off the ramp and piled into the last truck. The Canada men, weighed down under a load of bread, marmalade and sugar, and smelling of perfume and fresh linen, line up to go.

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. So now we overhear a conversation between two of these prisoners. He appreciates the good things these transports of Jews are constantly bringing. But – how long can this go on? Surely, sooner or later, they’ll run out of people!

And then what? No more sausages, for sure. Well, it was a worry. The stories here inhabit what Primo Levi calls the grey zone, the compromised, corrupted world where there is no innocence, only degrees of guilt.

Borowski had a “good Auschwitz” in the way many people had a “good war”. They didn’t die, and it wasn’t all ghastly all the time. He describes the recreational facilities in Auschwitz.

You’ve imagined the gas chambers and Sonderkommando and the ovens, now imagine this: Right after the boxing match I took in another show – I went to hear a concert. Over in Birkenau you could probably never imagine what feats of culture we are exposed to up here, just a few kilometres away from the smouldering chimneys. Just think – an orchestra playing the overture to Tancred, then something by Berlioz This book is overshadowed by the author’s suicide at the age of 29. This is a distraction, like other author suicides. The work always stands by itself, it is not placed by the grotesque act of suicide into a sphere beyond judgement.

Readers encounter the reality inside these words, not outside. And inside these stories the atmosphere is oppressive, the fumes acrid, the stench is unbearable, the company not the best. When I finished this book I looked around.

The room was quiet and warm, the fire was on (spring is here, but it’s still cold). One of the cats jumped onto the windowledge for another few hours of birdwatching. I remembered we’re out of marmalade and thanked Tadeusz Borowski for reminding me of that. Do I recommend this book?

I can’t say that I do. 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. 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. Chedlya Tara Chedalya Bhavana Mp3 Ringtone. At gunpoint, 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, he unloaded the cattle cars of Jewish families and Gypsy families. He carried and sorted their belongings to be stored in 'Canada' - the warehouse that held wealth. He witnessed thousands of moms and kids being escorted onto trucks that trundled along a little road that wound into a pretty little patch of birch trees while their strong husbands were made to walk in a different direction. 'Several other men are carrying a small girl with only one leg. They hold her by the arms and the one leg. Tears are running down her face and she whispers faintly: 'Sir, it hurts, it hurts.'

They throw her on the truck on top of the corpses. Daniel Tosh Happy Thoughts Audio Download on this page. She will burn alive along with them.'

By the time that Auschwitz and its more evil little sister Birkenau were built, a good deal was known about keeping masses of humanity free of infectious disease. Dead slaves cannot work in the mines or factories or build roads or play concertos or test how best to treat gunshot wounds, right? The SS doctors knew that typhus was spread by lice, so fumigating blankets and bedding along with clothing was important. Decontaminating the hair and bodies of those who already have lice was important for the welfare of all, correct? Yes, you may be free of these awful insects, but regretfully you have been in close contact with hundreds of others on the train.

We regret the way you had to be transported, but it was important for your safety to get you here quickly. Our apologies.

So, step this way to the bathhouses, please! Leave your soiled clothes for now. Let's get you and the children cleaned up, and then how about a thick bowl of steaming soup? Maybe some chilled water and a salty tomato-onion salad instead. Tadeusz Borowski does not shirk his responsibility in what was perpetrated at these two camps. Yes, he would have been shot or gassed or beaten to death with a shovel handle had he refused or revolted. But still - the guilt.

As a Polish political prisoner, he was allowed to receive packages of food from his family in Warsaw and shared it with those who had little. From working on the ramp as part of the Canada crew, he was then transferred to work as a roofer and saw with a birds eye view what went on below him. Camp doctors later trained him as an orderly, and he did what he could to ease suffering. But the atrocities he saw and his own culpability never left him.

Dead babies, live children thrown into fire pits, cannibalism by those most starved, and the never ending zombie-like march of hundreds of thousands to the gas chambers ruined his soul. He had been engaged to a girl before his arrest, and through some sort of miracle they were able to find one another after liberation. He began writing again and they got married. He published this very collection of stories and received rave reviews from Polish critics. Three days after the birth of their baby daughter, the immensity of it all became too much. Tadeusz was 29 when he killed himself by opening a gas jet in his apartment.

This way for the gas, ladies and gentlemen! His black humor lived on. The book is only 150 pages - you can handle it and should. '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. 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 narra 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 us out with such 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?

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 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 between the normal and the abnormal wavers, then vanishes. Borowski, a concentration camp victim himself, understood what human beings will do to endure the unendurable.' Borowski wrote this collection of concentration-camp stories after surviving imprisonment in Auschwitz and Dachau from 1943 to 1945. He committed suicide in Warsaw in 1951 when he was only 29 years old. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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 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 start their future). Monstrously squeezed together, they have fainted from heat, suffocated, crushed one another. Now they push towards the opened doors, breathing like fish cast out on the sand.' My expectations were very high, after reading the first short. But to be honest, the following stories didn't met those expectations. And that was a shame, because all of them are certainly worth reading. Borowski gives a voice to the victims, who were reduced to beasts from the moment they were loaded into the cattle cars; and the ones that were lucky enough to survive the transport and the selection at the train ramp, saw their lives as prisoners reduced to nothing but a beastly struggle for life.

Borowski understood this very well, and was painfully aware of the fact that he was no exception. Whatever the rating given to this collection of concentration camp stories, one thing is certain: it packs a powerful punch, and is unmissable if you even want to try to understand what the victims went through. '.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. 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 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 coming to the hospital”), for days I could only read Borowski.

Sleeping badly, having nightmares, deep into the house-stash (which I’d raided in the aftermath), alone and stuck far from friends and family, I found nothing else that gripped me or made sense. A few paragraphs, a page, a 3- or 7-page story – every burst was potent, helped to wake me, focussed my thought. In that state I wrote the following, for what it’s worth. The words may be clumsy, but the sentiment? I stand by it.

Tadeusz Borowski, a young writer approaching the peak of his craft, was imprisoned a few weeks after the rules were changed at Auschwitz: no “Aryans” would be gassed. Borowski knew that lies are one thing and pretence another. You lie to stay alive, to get ahead, in both camp and civilian life (where he rose to prominence in the Communist Party, admitted that he’d “stamped on the throat of his song” and killed himself at 28 after trying unsuccessfully to intercede in the prosecution of a friend and writer two weeks earlier). But he was no criminal, no sadist. Not like Becker the ex-Poznan camp-senior who’d hung thieves “from the post” (hands behind their backs till their arms came out of their sockets) and “really known hunger” (“when one man regards another man as something to eat”). Or like First Sargeant Schillinger, killed when after taking a comely naked prisoner by the hand she “scooped up a handful of gravel and threw it in his face, and when Schillinger cried out in pain and dropped his revolver, the woman snatched it up and fired several shots into his abdomen.” Schillinger was lying face down, clawing the dirt in pain with his fingers. We lifted him off the ground and carried him – not too gently – to a car.

On the way he kept groaning through clenched teeth: “Oh Gott, mein Gott, was hab’ ich getan dass ich so leiden muss?” Schillinger, Becker – these are pretenders. To pretend that one life is more important than another. To pretend that they do what they do for any higher reason than to get. Borowski, in writing fiction (and it is fiction, by what magic I’m not sure), is lying, but not pretending. His picture of Auschwitz is so true and sure and moving because it treats of it as just another aspect of life. Yes there is horror, but not only horror.

And for a man who after the war apparently gave in to the rhetoric of hate in his pro-party journalism, he writes here miraculously without hate. He feels for everyone, from soldiers to the condemned. He sees in everyone oppressor and oppressed. In this, his wisdom is profound.

Compared to Borowski, I lead the life of an aristocrat. Life moves slow here, but I’m out of step. Hoping to catch a wave of experience, I fall back on self-destruction. For Borowski, catching or not catching that wave is irrelevant – he must ride it. From great suffering does not come great art, but suffering is sobering. To this most sobering of works about suffering I give thanks.

A hero neither in camp-life nor politics, Tadeusz Borowski was, briefly, a hero in art. Iggy Pop once said that when he got out front of a good rock band he didn’t feel anything, and he didn’t want to either. Tadeusz Borowski is a benign Terminator – no pity, no pain. Or rather he has been that. He may be the anti-me experientially but I have lived his nightmares. So stupid, so Western, to ritually ingest poison to know what’s important.

Borowski, at 21, with his fiance in Birkenau shave-headed and covered in sores, knew it in his gut. Family, friends, freedom, home. If these were taken from me tomorrow and I was allowed one book I’d take Borowski. He’s here right beside me, just in case. The best description of bread is a description of hunger Tadeusz Rozewicz Two or three weeks later I gave the book to my wife.

She cried and cried. Borowski entered our shared experience. Her tastes and mine are so different that I feel confident in stating bluntly: this is a masterpiece. Moving in the very best of ways, not exploitative, not cold. With any luck, this book may have helped changed my life. 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 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 think this is the only time that this has ever happened. It is not a ridiculous reaction, either. As titles go it is provocative, shocking even; it is also, I believe, appropriate, because it sums up the attitude – tough, mocking, cynical, cruel – of most of the stories contained within. [ Work Makes You Free. The gates of Auschwitz] I have read a number of books about the Holocaust, and each is different, of course.

But the one thing that generally tends to tie them together is that they focus on the victims, who are almost always Jewish, and their experiences; there is a very real sense of innocence, and clear distinctions between the aggressors and the oppressed, the good and the bad. That is not the case here. Borowski’s stories are written in the first person, and the narrator [if we assume it is the same one throughout – which for ease I will] is openly, actively involved in ‘the process.’ Now, one must not lose sight of the fact that Tadek has not chosen to be in Auschwitz-Birkenau, and in this way he is a victim too, but, nevertheless, the morality on display is muddier than one would expect, to say the least.

The title story, which opens the collection, is particularly disturbing. I must admit that I found it tough to keep turning the pages, even bearing in mind my stance, my insistence that we read the stories as fiction [something that, much to my irritation and dismay, some people seem incapable of doing]. Unusually, Borowski dispenses with backstory, with arrests or journeys, and drops you straightaway into the camp. There is, therefore, no sense of building towards a [terrible] climax, towards an end; one gets the impression that life has always been this way and always will, which is, I imagine, how it must have felt to be a prisoner. The author also immediately challenges your expectations by introducing a ‘fat Frenchman’ [there were fat people in the camps? Is the absurd question that ran through my mind], and describing a situation where the inmates appear to eat well and have access to all kinds of luxury items [Tadek notes that the labour gang ‘smells not of maple forests but of French perfume’].

One feels an instant revulsion for all this, for the idea that some prisoners were chowing down on bacon and potatoes while others starved, even though there is little sense in everyone starving together. “Why is it that nobody cries out, nobody spits in their faces, nobody jumps at their throats? We doff our caps to the S.S. Men returning from the little wood; if our name is called we obediently go with them to die, and—we do nothing. We starve, we are drenched by rain, we are torn from our families. What is this mystery? This strange power of one man over another?

This insane passivity that cannot be overcome? Our only strength is our great number—the gas chambers cannot accommodate all of us.” It is where this food, these luxuries are coming from that provides the most aggressive punch in the gut. I am a very cynical man, and so you would think that I would have been able to guess, that it would have been obvious, yet somehow it still came as a horrible surprise, as though I didn’t want to acknowledge the truth to myself until I had no choice. In short, the trains draw into the camp, and the labour gang, or Kommando, help to unload the new arrivals, in the process relieving them of their possessions, be they dead or alive. The gold and money goes to the S.S., and the rest goes to the workers, such as Tadek and the Frenchman.

They are, then, essentially robbers, even, you might say, graverobbers. And yet what is perhaps hardest to stomach is not the stealing, the death, the prospect of the crematorium [or ‘cremo’ as it is called throughout the book], but the inhumanity, the lack of empathy displayed by the prisoners. We want to believe, and the media plays a big part in helping us to believe, that those in crisis, those who are suffering, will stick together, will go down together, will, at the very least, sympathise with each other, but that is not the case here. I have long felt that certain atrocities or tragedies undergo a kind of Disneyfication. One need only look at 9/11, where the story has become about heroism and patriotism, and the truly awful has been buried. One of the collection’s overriding themes is, as one would expect, survival or, more specifically, what will people do to survive?

What are we capable of in order to save ourselves? It’s a question not many of us would be comfortable in asking of ourselves, and even if one did it is impossible to say whether our response would be truthful. In any case, Borowski asks it, or the camp does, and the answers are often unpleasant. “Real hunger is when one man regards another man as something to eat.” In the second story in the collection Tadek is speaking to a Jewish man, needling him somewhat about his actions in a previous camp. The old man, he himself admits, denounced his own son, had him hung. Again, we instantly recoil, we judge, we ourselves, as readers, denounce this man, and yet he then says something significant.

He says that at some point one comes to see other people as food. Of course, he doesn’t mean this literally [although there is a story that does involve cannibalism], rather that other people become your means of survival, they are sacrificed, if necessary, in order for you to continue to live.

I believe, or at least I hope, that none of us can relate to that dilemma: having to decide between one’s own existence or the existence of someone else. We cannot therefore truly judge this man, because lord knows what we would actually do. We know what we would like to think we would do, but that, as we sit comfortably in our homes, means absolutely nothing. There is also one other thing to consider, which is that for those who are placed in brutal environments, who are treated brutally themselves, and witness brutality on a daily basis, there is the danger that it will become normal. Human beings are extraordinarily adaptable, our expectations, behaviour, morals are likely to change depending on our circumstances; just look at the army, at the police. So, yes, Tadek’s attitude, his actions, appear cold and uncaring, even wrong, to us, but we are not in a concentration camp; in there, Borowski seems to suggest, that is just what life was like.

People did not hold hands and help each other out, they looked after themselves, they wished people dead, they joked about the cremos, they got annoyed with weaker inmates. Having said this, as the book progresses, there is a shift in tone, the narrator becomes more hopeful, certainly more sentimental and caring towards his fellow man or woman. Indeed, one story is in the form of a letter he sends to his girlfriend, who is also in a concentration camp. While this new, more humane Tadek is a relief it does, in my opinion, mean that the collection, taken as a whole, feels slightly uneven, even contradictory. Don’t get me wrong, This Way for the Gas is a fine book, but the second half is less original, less startling, less disconcerting in terms of what you are asked to confront, about man in general and yourself in particular.

Neither poems nor prose just a length of rope just the wet earth — that’s the way home. Neither vodka nor bread just bursts of rage just more new graves — that’s youth and that’s love. 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.

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. 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. 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. 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? But I could not put it out of my mind. There are passages so terrible that 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?

But I could not put it out of my mind. There are passages so terrible that they will haunt you, passages that will knock the wind out of you. And if you come away with nothing else, you will understand the innate cruelty in humanity. There are no Schindler's in these stories, no heroes. Only people struggling for survival under the worst of conditions. 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 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 out what truly happened in the camps.

These aren't stories. They are memories. 'There can be no beauty if it is paid for by human injustice.' 'We are as insensitive as trees, as stones. And we remain as numb as trees when they are being cut down, or stones when they are being crushed.'

'.with a tremendous intellectual effort I attempt to grasp the true significance of the events, things and people I have seen.' 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. 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 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. 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 and later the survivors. Levi spent a year in the camp as a Jew and Borowski spent two years in the Auschwitz/Dachau camp for two years as a Polish prisoner. Both of them write in a very detached manner. They just narrate the everyday happenings of the camp.

While Primo Levi chose the genre, memoir Borowski chose the form of short stories. But then, there are not much differences as the short stories are narrated in the first person and the narrator's name is Tadek. May be, in a memoir one could organize thoughts and observations under various headings and could easily compartmentalize (the Daily Work, Hospital Life, Selection for Death, The authority, the torture, etc). But the same thing is narrated in the short story form by Borowski - each story circles around a certain event. In this collection there are just twelve stories. And this collection is well arranged as the first story speaks of the earlier days of concentration camp life and thus it progresses to the stories when the war was coming to an end to the liberation of the camp to the free life in Poland by Borowski. The shadow of the concentration camp stands over his entire life and the entire collection.

Each story impacts you - and when I say impact I am not just using an interesting word to praise the book. It may be the case as well. But what is important is that you get the impact almost emotionally and many times also physically. I realized my own body shivering many times.

Add to it the fact that I was haunted by the images narrated in the book at night and thus lost sleep for two days. The first and the second story can shatter anyone. And I had recently visited the horrendous site - Auschwitz-Birkenau camp site. Thus I could easily see the scenes narrated in the story by my own eyes. I saw myself walking on the camp site when the event narrated in the book was taking place. Along the way, Borowski just gives few commentaries or some conversations that had gone among the prisoners in which is revealed his tremendous will to understand the situation. And the result is very much pessimistic and frightening.

Here is a quote taken from a dialogue between two prisoners regarding justice: 'I think that for those who have suffered unjustly, justice alone is not enough. They want the guilty to suffer unjustly too. Only this will they understand as justice.'

And searching for reason to such amount of atrocities without any itching in the conscience, he finds it in the idealistic, progressive philosophical thoughts that shaped the Nazi Germany. Here is a quote: 'But, being a German, he fails to distinguish between reality and illusion, and is inclined to take words at their face value, as if they always represented the truth. He says KAMERADEN and thinks that such a thing is possible. Above the gate leading to the camp, these words are inscribed on metal scrolls: 'Work makes one free.'

I suppose they believe it, the S.S. Men and the German prisoners--those raised on Luther, Fichte, Hehel, Nietzsche.' The final vision based on the concentration camp experience is even more shattering: '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. 'The world is ruled by neither justice nor morality; crime is not punished nor virtue rewarded, one is forgotten as quickly as the other. The world is ruled by power and power is obtained with money.

To work is senseless, because money cannot be obtained through work but through exploitation of others. And if we cannot exploit as much as we wish, at least let us work as little as we can. We believe neither in the morality of man, nor in the morality of the systems.' Now just think of the original title Primo Levi gave for his memoir IF THIS WERE THE MAN. The answer can be anything. The prisoner who killed the other prisoner, the prisoner who stole the food of the other starving prisoner, the prisoner who without a pinch of conscience pushed the other almost dead (but living still) prisoner inside the burning oven, the prisoner who was willing to eat the spilled brain of an executed prisoner (shot in the neck in the public square) - That is the way to survive. Imagine the horror that might have been theirs (Levi and Borowski) after the liberation.

Everyday they were visited by demons from the past. They feel the maximum guilt for having survived. They feel increasingly that it is in no time that they too will be reduced to smoke and ash. The feel death as a constant nagging companion.

To escape the nagging they embrace it willingly. Both, Levi and Borowski, like many other concentration camp survivors took their own lives. There is a question raised by Borowski in the book which made me cringe with fear. Thinking of the war and its outcome he makes an observation in the form of a question. I give you the question: 'IF GERMANS WIN THE WAR, WHAT WILL THE WORLD KNOW ABOUT US?' 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 at and cringing at one and the same time.

For instance, Inmates playing a soccer game are having a good time, but don't bat 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 at 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 eye while others are being tortured and killed. The following excerpt between two 'pals' is particularly illustrative: 'What's new with you?'

Just gassed up a Czech transport.' 'That I know. I mean personally.' What sort of 'personally' is there for me? The oven, the barracks, back to the oven.Well, if you really want to know.' We've figured out a new way to burn people.

Want to hear about it?' He goes on to describe a particularly gruesome procedure then bursts out laughing when he sees his friends unease. He goes on, ' Listen, doctor, here in Auschwitz we must entertain ourselves in every way we can. Otherwise, who can stand it?' The title refers to line after line of thousands of men, women and children walking to the gas chambers every day. Whether watching 'these lines of ants' from afar or taking part in 'unloading the ramps,' clearing away the dead from the cattle cars, it is all just a part of life.

As Borowski says, In order to survive one had to go numb, feel nothing at all while, for instance, pocketing food left behind by those walking to the gas chambers, At the same time, Borowski shows us that he, somehow, still maintained his humanity. This is obvious in the love letters he writes to his fiance in a nearby camp. In these letters he writes poetically and philosophically about hope for the future for both himself and for mankind. 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 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 benefit to the dead. 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.' 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. 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 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 bears mentioning again: these stories will feel like the horrible fiction of a sadistic mind, but they are firmly rooted in fact, in the documented reality of true hell on earth. As a Jew, but especially as a human, I feel it is vital for everyone to know what went on in the concentration camps.

We need to remember that the companion to our capacity for genius and brilliance is an equal and opposite capacity for wanton brutality. Only by knowing what has been done (and to other degrees still is done) in our name can we fight against it. This fight, a fight that never ends, is a difficult but necessary part of living as a human being. 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. 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 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?

For their shoes perhaps? 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. 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.

How do you write about the Holocaust? Well, Borowski elects one radical approach: just tell what happened. That doesn't mean that this isn't fiction, or that the author is not making a point with what he chooses to relate in each story.

But the ingredients of his stories are real concentration camp events, and they are presented with a dry, sometimes jaded reportage style, even though they all have an 'I' in the midst of them. The stories are painful, not only because of the portrayal of atrociti How do you write about the Holocaust? Well, Borowski elects one radical approach: just tell what happened.

That doesn't mean that this isn't fiction, or that the author is not making a point with what he chooses to relate in each story. But the ingredients of his stories are real concentration camp events, and they are presented with a dry, sometimes jaded reportage style, even though they all have an 'I' in the midst of them.

The stories are painful, not only because of the portrayal of atrocities, but because of the revealed psychology, that largely goes unspoken and unanalyzed, but which is apparent in the transformed characters of the inmates themselves. The author, in his own self-confessed 'concentration-camp mentality' has a remarkable awareness of his own lack of self-awareness.

He knows that in seeing what went on all around him, the only one he couldn't see was himself. (This reflection is revealed in one of the stories in the collection that is set outside the camp, in the period after the liberation, when he allowed himself -- or his character -- to be a bit more analytical than he allowed in the stories set within the camps). But his self can certainly be implied or deduced to be as amoral and self-interested as the other survivors, as much a part of the system of abusing and being abused, and in possession of as much repressed guilt as the others. For that is the most painful message to emerge from the stories--a message that many didn't ever want to hear: another term for survivor's-guilt is guilt. Those whose bodies miraculously survived were typically so degraded as to have been stripped of almost everything we call humanity: dignity, ethics, and faith of any sort. To get there, they often had to be active participants in the brutality of the system after being socialized into a total disregard for the suffering of weaker or less-fortunate others. I was taken back to the 6th grade when I went to a Holocaust Convention.

A convention. That was one advantage of growing up in Las Vegas. It gets better I know. A Holocaust Convention in Las Vegas. But there it was.

There I was was, one of the lucky few to be picked from my 6th grade class. The bus took us and dropped us off.

I don't even remember a teacher being present. We/I fended for myself. I wandered around, looked at horrific pictures. Sat is various.lectures; I guess. For lunch I I was taken back to the 6th grade when I went to a Holocaust Convention.

A convention. That was one advantage of growing up in Las Vegas. It gets better I know.

A Holocaust Convention in Las Vegas. But there it was.

There I was was, one of the lucky few to be picked from my 6th grade class. The bus took us and dropped us off. I don't even remember a teacher being present. We/I fended for myself.

I wandered around, looked at horrific pictures. Sat is various.lectures; I guess. For lunch I sat with a bunch of 'old' people, I remember them asking me questions the entire time. The highlight was Robert Clary from Hogans Heros Fame. He told us his story.

So here I am reading these stories and I kept thinking back to that day. Its funny how things stay with us. But about this book and these stories;part of me wanted to laugh, part of me wanted to cry. And why did I even choose to read this in the first place? It was like that convention. I didn't want to go because I was interested, I thought it would be nice to get out of school for the day. But it planted an interest and here I am reading these horrific,funny stories.

Should you decide this sounds like something you might.want to read. Put yourself in their shoes.Don't judge. I would have done whatever I needed to do to survive. This would not be a light read. But if you have an interest, I would recommended it. 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 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 advent of communism on a global basis would ensure that atrocities such as he had witnessed at Auschwitz would never happen again. Unfortunately when the communist regime in Poland tortured one of his fellow internees, his fragile mental equilibrium shattered.

Borowski committed suicide at the age of 28. This collection of short stories is recognized as a classic in Poland but has languished in relative obscurity in the Anglo Saxon world which is unfortunate. For many readers the best story in the book is the Battle of Grunwald which harshy criticizes nationalism and calls instead for human solidarity across ethnic, linguistic, and religious divides. This story was turned by Andrzej Wajda into the brilliant movie Landscape after the Battle which is well worth viewing.

Borowski was a sharp observer and an excellent literary stylist. This set of stories belongs in the Holocaust canon. 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 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 prisoners to each other and the camp system enforcing this murderous complicity. There are images you will never forget, such as when he observes, ““Between two throw-ins in a soccer game, right behind my back, three thousand people had been put to death.” There are feelings he conveys that will shock you, such as the combination of hatred and greed the prisoners feel when unloading the trains full of fellow human beings on their way to the gas chambers. And then there are passages like this: 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.

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.