Summary Of This Way For The Gas Ladies And Gentlemen

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen is a story written by Polish writer and journalist Tadeusz Borowski. He grew in an era of war which he had to maneuver to survive.
The story reflects what he had to go through when he was imprisoned in the most infamous Nazi concentration camp in World War II: Auschwitz-Birkenau. He explains with vivid details his experiences without deepening into obvious moral judgments of his own or other inmate actions and just recounts what he saw and had to do to survive. Throughout the story we can notice several human reactions to extreme situations inside the concentration camp. Those reactions can give us some ideas about our human nature; we can find lack of pity, sympathy, cowardice and bravery among reactions.

From SS men -who were the Nazis guarding the concentration camp-, to Borowski himself, but in his case, with a different meaning. One of the author’s awful parts of his work was cleaning the dirt -referring to people- that was left after people were killed when they went inside the gas chambers. He even had to clean kids, carrying them “like chickens” (39). “Don’t take them to the trucks, pass them on to the women” said a SS man to Borowski, clearly showing no sense of pity for those dead children or for the women whom he wanted to carry the kids (39). SS men were heartless people who did not care at all about Jews or any people being executed, they just followed orders no matter what those orders were. On the other hand, to survive Borowski had to become part of a Kommando, with all that implied. Kommandos were group of prisoners who had privileges like food and clothes and their purpose was unload heaps of Jews who arrived in cattle cars and later led them to their dead in the gas chambers. There is a shocking part where Borowski asked his French friend Henri if they were good people because he did not feel any pity for people going to the chambers. He even said “…I am not sorry they’re going to the gas chamber. Damn them all!...” (40). If anybody read what he said out of context we could inferred that he did not care either about people dying, but the truth is he was going to be killed if he did not do what he was

When Borowski was asked to pass dead children to women, he said to them “Take them, for God’s sake!”; in that moment a surprised SS man asked Borowski “What, you don’t want to take them?” reaching his revolver; suddenly, an old woman said “You mustn’t shoot, I’ll carry them…My poor boy…” whispering and smiling at him (40). This strange form of sympathy saved Borowski’s live, even when she knew she was going to