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

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Clendinnen explores the experience of the Holocaust from the point of view of both the victims and the perpetrators, and discusses survivor testimonies of writers. 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. It is impossible to control oneself any longer. Brutally we tear suitcases from their hands, impatiently pull off their coats. Go on, go on, vanish! They go, they vanish. Men, women, children. Some of them know. Meine Herrschaften, this way, ladies and gentlemen, try not to throw your things around, please. Show some goodwill," he says courteously, his restless hands playing with the slender whip.

I think he is reflecting on himself. I think he is struggling with accepting what he is doing and trying to connect that to what he thinks or had been told is necessary. The exchange is simply trying to think in a more humane direction but really I think he is just trying to find any way to justify his actions but pretending they are good people. 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: When the transport arrives, the prisoners cry out for water and air. As the prisoners are unloaded from the train, they ask to know what will happen to them, but Tadek says he does not speak Polish. After the prisoners have all gotten off the train, the SS officer tells the kommando to clean up the car.As German expansion in Europe grew, Poland's government vainly attempted to protect itself. Danzig had a large German population, and Adolf Hitler eventually claimed it for Germany. A strong Nazi Party developed in Danzig, and by 1937, it controlled the city government. These officials made relations with Poland increasingly difficult. 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 So I have spent the better part of the last three days thinking and writing in an attempt to understand the rationale, the redeeming purpose perhaps, of his suicide. Surely, I surmised, his death, as that of Primo Levi among so many others, is something other than tragedy doubled. As it turned out, my thoughts were excruciatingly trivial; the 5000 or so words that followed were patent nonsense.

And now the guards are being posted along the rails, across the beams, in the green shade of the Silesian chestnuts, to form a tight circle around the ramp. They wipe the sweat from their faces and sip out of their canteens. It is unbearably hot; the sun stands motionless at its zenith. Tadeusz Borowski was a Polish poet, journalist, and novelist who was detained in Auschwitz and Dachau during the war. In spite of the fact that he was not part of the Polish resistance movement, his fiancée was, and both were detained in 1945. Borowski wrote broadly about his wartime encounters in his poetry and fiction, turning into a focal figure in Polish literature as an outcome. After his experiences in the battle, Borowski abandoned poetry and changed to prose, asserting that what he had encountered could not be communicated in poetry. Update this section! Religion is the opium of the people," Henri, who is a Communist and a rentier, says sententiously. "If they didn't believe in God and eternal life, they'd have smashed the crematoria long ago."

This story can be described as a kind of “initiation story” for the narrator. How is he changed or transformed by the events of the narrative? Alles verstehen," they answer in crematorium Esperanto. All is well—they will not have to move the heavy rails or carry the beams.

The Polish government considered the poem "amoral" [1] but Borowski found work as a journalist. He joined the Soviet-controlled Polish Workers' Party in 1948 and wrote political tracts as well. At first he believed that Communism was the only political force truly capable of preventing any future Auschwitz from happening. In 1950 he received the National Literary Prize, Second Degree. 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.

The heat rises, the hours are endless. We are without even our usual diversion: the wide roads leading to the crematoria are empty. For several days now, no new transports have come in. Part of "Canada"2 has been liquidated and detailed to a labour Kommando—one of the very toughest—at Harmenz. For there exists in the camp a special brand of justice based on envy: when the rich and mighty fall, their friends see to it that they fall to the very bottom. And Canada, our Canada, which smells not of maple forests but of French perfume, has fortunes in diamonds and currency from all over Europe.