Analysis Of This Way For The Gas, By Tadeusz Borowski

All prisoners from the concentration camps suffered in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Failure to comply meant one’s own death, and death of any individual would not stop the Nazi officers from finding others to do the job. To say any victim was worse off than others would be to belittle their suffering; suffering itself is not a competition. Tadeusz Borowski’s story is said to be “one of the cruelest of testimonies to what man did to man, and a pitiless verdict that anything can be done to a human being” (Borowski 12). Borowski’s disturbing account depicts the atrocities of victims-turned-executioner. Borowski’s This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen increases the horrors of the Holocaust by depicting an endless cycle of suffering caused by the victims, victimizing each another. Within Auschwitz, the differences between the victims and perpetrators were frequently blurred; the biggest difference was merely the way one suffered, as all the prisoners at concentration camps were victims. Some “lucky” victims were at less of a risk than others at the price of helping the Nazis, although for the fear of their own life they did not get much choice in the matter. In Borowski’s story, these prisoners were wealthy and referred to as “Canadians”; the Canadians were

Borowski becomes emotionally exhausted after sending off two groups of transports to their death, Henri says to him “…since Christmas at least a million people have passed through my hands” (Borowski 46). He is aware that he is responsible for at least a million deaths at the price of his own life. Within Auschwitz acts of valor did to occur. A Catholic priest sacrificed himself enduring death-by-starvation to save the life of a prisoner who he did not even know (Borowski 22). This act of selflessness in an environment where one could not help but be selfish was an extraordinary