Helpful Score: 8
Honestly, I was a little disappointed with this book. I have read many books on this subject and..I don't know...the information in the book was very informative, but the style in which it was written, I just did not care for. It was actually hard for me to get through the entire book, because of the writing style and not the content.
Marianna S. (Angeloudi) reviewed This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen on + 160 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 6
The somewhat macabre title is a good intro to this book of short stories by Tadeusz Borowski, a Polish "Aryan" (i.e. non-Jewish) prisoner in Auschwitz and Birkenau. By the time he arrived in camp, they were no longer routinely executing "Aryan" prisoners, but only Jews. His matter-of-fact descriptions- of the most mundane occurences, as well as the most horrific, leaves the reader with a sense of unreality. How can this man, who survived and witnessed the most horrendous examples of cruelty, torture, mass executions, and inhumanity, write these stories which include examples of wry humorous observations of the prisoner's foibles and hopes for the future?
This is not an easy read- the subject matter is truly barbaric- but it is very worth reading. Borowski, a concentration camp victim himself, understood what human beings will do to endure the unendurable. These stories, considered a masterpiece of Polish Literature, stand as cruel testimony to the level of inhumanity of which man is capable.
Unfortunately, Borowski ended his own life by his own hand in 1951, 6 years after surviving his three years of slave labor in the camps.
This is not an easy read- the subject matter is truly barbaric- but it is very worth reading. Borowski, a concentration camp victim himself, understood what human beings will do to endure the unendurable. These stories, considered a masterpiece of Polish Literature, stand as cruel testimony to the level of inhumanity of which man is capable.
Unfortunately, Borowski ended his own life by his own hand in 1951, 6 years after surviving his three years of slave labor in the camps.
Frank H. (perryfran) reviewed This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen on + 1176 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 4
This was really a horrific account of daily life in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. Borowski's "This Way for the Gas" is actually a collection of stories which detail the brutality and gruesomeness of the Holocaust. Borowski was from Poland but he was not Jewish so he received better treatment in the camps and he tells the stories in a very matter-of-fact language. Some of the details portrayed by Borowski will leave you haunted. Ironically, Borowski committed suicide several years after his experiences by putting his head in a gas oven probably over guilt and remorse related to his experiences. I would highly recommend this book - it is a remarkable read, very profound and overwhelming.
Eva Marie L. (babyjulie) -
Helpful Score: 3
All of the stories in this book are touching with some being far more powerful and unforgettable than others.
I think for a person who devours any and all books on the Holocaust this is a good addition but for someone who reads less on the subject this probably isn't a great one to add.
I can think of a dozen (or more) books I'd recommend before this one.
I think for a person who devours any and all books on the Holocaust this is a good addition but for someone who reads less on the subject this probably isn't a great one to add.
I can think of a dozen (or more) books I'd recommend before this one.
Helpful Score: 2
Borowski survived both Auschwitz and Dachau to marry, write, and work for the Polish government. This slim volume contains a dozen powerful short stories that stand alongside Elie Wiesel's as clear-eyed testaments.
Helpful Score: 1
What lengths would you have gone to survive as a prisoner in Auschwitz? Work at the crematoriums?- Would you help meet all the "transports"(Jews leaving the trains) and strip them of all they carry - including the clothes on their backs - pushing them naked towards the trucks that carried them to their fates -- the gas chambers - in order to survive yourself? Women and children as well as men? These stories of man's inhumanity to man were written by a surviver of Auschwitz. The author committed suicide by opening a gas valve in 1951.
Something much different than the other Haulocast accounts I have read. Reader beware - you will feel haunted.
Something much different than the other Haulocast accounts I have read. Reader beware - you will feel haunted.
A gritty look at WWII concentration camps. Fascinating.
Very powerful book. Gives a great deal of detail.
This collection of short stories by an Auschwitz survivor is a glimpse into the horrors of the concentration camp where people do whatever is necessary to survive. Although classified as fiction, it is clearly a chronicle of all that Borowksi participated in and observed. The arrival of the transports that brought thousands of people to a camp where they were then immediately dispatched to the gas chambers is just one of the horrific, unimaginable events that was a routine part of everyday life. The monstrous inhumanity of the Nazis is beyond comprehension to a sane mind.
This collection of stories is not one of the more well-known accounts of life in Auschwitz, at least in the United States, but it is no less an important piece of testimony, that is simultaneously tragic and humanizing. It was compiled by notable Polish author and journalist Tadeusz Borowski, who was actually born in the Ukrainian SSR, today a part of the Ukraine. His family was targeted by the Soviets during Stalin's reign of terror, as both of his parents had apparently been subjected to persecution when he was still a child. His father was sent to a Gulag camp in Russia for his membership in a Polish military organization during the first World War, and his mother was deported to a settlement in Siberia in 1930, during which Tadeusz lived with his aunt.
Tragically, Borowski didn't really survive the war. He was one of the many thousands who were just too traumatized to recover. I don't like to say that he "committed suicide," at age thirty. I think it's more proper to state that he was as much a murder victim as those who died by the millions in the camps, as his injuries he sustained there were just too severe to survive. Ironically, or perhaps not, he committed suicide by inhaling gas from a gas stove, in 1951, at age 28. His wife had just given birth to his one and only child, a daughter, just a few days prior to his death.
Borowski provides a unique description of his experiences, as a "privileged" prisoner, specifically a Pole, not a Jew, which meant that he was permitted certain allowances, such as parcels from home (there was a camp post office), including food and letters, and what most would consider at least a species of preferential treatment. He paints a portrait of a world of stark contrasts and impossible contradictions: on the one hand, there are the endless atrocities, like the transports, where thousands of people are unloaded at the ramp, to be led immediately to their deaths, where the "Canada" crew sort through belongings and cart away deceased infants from the trains who did not survive the journey.
On the other hand, there are the brief flashes of light in darkness, almost moments of normalcy in extraordinary circumstances: the construction of a soccer field, located just adjacent to the crematoria, the planting of flowers under the barracks windows, the adornment of the bleak buildings with designs using crushed red brick, the planting of gardens, at Auschwitz, replete with spinach, lettuce, sunflowers and garlic, irrigated daily with water carried from the lavatories. On the other hand, the young author noted that hunger remained a constant. One conversation on the subject resulted in another prisoner telling him, "you haven't really known hunger... have you? Real hunger is when one man regards another man as something to eat."
The soccer field the prisoners had built became a community space, where hospital orderlies and convalescent patients gathered to watch the games, where "anybody who felt like it came to the field and kicked the ball around." As one might expect, however, the scene could instantly turn dark: the author reported that on one occasion, during a Sunday game, "a train had just arrived. People were emerging form the cattle cars and walking in the direction of the little wood. All I could see from where I stood were bright splashes of color... I returned with the ball and kicked it back in a wide arc... I stopped in amazement-the ramp was empty. Out of the whole colorful summer procession, not one person remained... Between two throw-ins in a soccer game, right behind my back, three thousand people had been put to death."
Although not perhaps as introspective as the works of authors such as Elie Wiesel or Primo Levi, both of whom spent a lifetime utilizing writing as a means to work through their trauma (although the latter tragically also eventually succumbed to suicide, albeit in old age), this account seems more raw journalism than the type of philosophical treatises that emerged in later decades, when survivors had spent some years attempting to come to terms with their experiences, something that Borowski didn't get the opportunity to do, when death came for him at a mere 28 years of age.
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"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."
Tragically, Borowski didn't really survive the war. He was one of the many thousands who were just too traumatized to recover. I don't like to say that he "committed suicide," at age thirty. I think it's more proper to state that he was as much a murder victim as those who died by the millions in the camps, as his injuries he sustained there were just too severe to survive. Ironically, or perhaps not, he committed suicide by inhaling gas from a gas stove, in 1951, at age 28. His wife had just given birth to his one and only child, a daughter, just a few days prior to his death.
Borowski provides a unique description of his experiences, as a "privileged" prisoner, specifically a Pole, not a Jew, which meant that he was permitted certain allowances, such as parcels from home (there was a camp post office), including food and letters, and what most would consider at least a species of preferential treatment. He paints a portrait of a world of stark contrasts and impossible contradictions: on the one hand, there are the endless atrocities, like the transports, where thousands of people are unloaded at the ramp, to be led immediately to their deaths, where the "Canada" crew sort through belongings and cart away deceased infants from the trains who did not survive the journey.
On the other hand, there are the brief flashes of light in darkness, almost moments of normalcy in extraordinary circumstances: the construction of a soccer field, located just adjacent to the crematoria, the planting of flowers under the barracks windows, the adornment of the bleak buildings with designs using crushed red brick, the planting of gardens, at Auschwitz, replete with spinach, lettuce, sunflowers and garlic, irrigated daily with water carried from the lavatories. On the other hand, the young author noted that hunger remained a constant. One conversation on the subject resulted in another prisoner telling him, "you haven't really known hunger... have you? Real hunger is when one man regards another man as something to eat."
The soccer field the prisoners had built became a community space, where hospital orderlies and convalescent patients gathered to watch the games, where "anybody who felt like it came to the field and kicked the ball around." As one might expect, however, the scene could instantly turn dark: the author reported that on one occasion, during a Sunday game, "a train had just arrived. People were emerging form the cattle cars and walking in the direction of the little wood. All I could see from where I stood were bright splashes of color... I returned with the ball and kicked it back in a wide arc... I stopped in amazement-the ramp was empty. Out of the whole colorful summer procession, not one person remained... Between two throw-ins in a soccer game, right behind my back, three thousand people had been put to death."
Although not perhaps as introspective as the works of authors such as Elie Wiesel or Primo Levi, both of whom spent a lifetime utilizing writing as a means to work through their trauma (although the latter tragically also eventually succumbed to suicide, albeit in old age), this account seems more raw journalism than the type of philosophical treatises that emerged in later decades, when survivors had spent some years attempting to come to terms with their experiences, something that Borowski didn't get the opportunity to do, when death came for him at a mere 28 years of age.
----------------------
"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."
Didn't particularly care for this one.
