Analysis Of This Way To The Gas Ladies And Gentlemen

In “This Way to The Gas, Ladies and Gentleman” by Tadeusz Borowski was a poet and was detained because he was clinically depressed. In this essay I will discuss the importance of “human nature” in the Holocaust and why it contributed to the deaths of millions of Jewish people (among other minority group’s i.e. gay men, black people, disabled people). The question of human nature is irrelevant and inappropriate in discussions about the holocaust. Since it was those questions of human nature that - What makes a human? What is natural? – Started the Holocaust in the first place. The fact that the narrator even has to make this decision should say more about the “human nature” of the Nazis then it does the prisoners. Borowski’s story is told from

Borowski is aware of the fact that even though he is a victim himself and is not at wholly at fault. He is aware of the Canada men’s participation and responsibility. Borowski did not write “This Way to The Gas” to discuss human nature but many Nazi’s and neo-Nazi’s use this tactic to dehumanize minorities. For instance, it is not in every Jewish person’s nature to be “rich” or have dark curly hair or hooked noses as the media and Nazi propaganda so often portrayed them in order to gain support. We know this now, or at least we should know that Nazi propaganda is false and to be ignored. So likewise we should know it is not within anyone’s nature to be evil, or dehumanize a particular group people. That is a choice. Tadek does these things though, why? Because he has been imprisoned and left with few choices for survival. He either steals from the Jewish victims or

After hours of stealing food from corpses and ripping luggage out of the Jewish victim’s hands headed to the trucks. Tadek begins to get tired of the trauma he witnesses and the narrator offers less and less detail of the victims. After the second round of trucks arrives Tadek is angered by the Jewish prisoners and blames them for putting him in the concentration camp. As a result, his descriptions of them in the text are less forgiving. When before he described the children as “cherubic” and the woman as “enchanting” soon though he devolves into dehumanizing descriptions such as “cattle”, “mound of meat”, and the children as “howling like dogs”. After witnessing the scenes of innocent woman and children go to their deaths Tadek protects himself and consciously separates himself from the atrocities happening before him. By doing this Tadek puts himself in an artificial place of power over the Jewish victims. He sees the atrocities before him but now he can blame them for their misery and dehumanize their suffering. This way of thinking was only one form of survival in the camps, but it does not create any universal standard for all gentile camp