This Way To The Gas Ladies And Gentlemen Analysis

How Does Survival of the Fittest Affect Someone’s Psyche? Charles Darwin once said in 1809, “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” This is a great example of what the prisoners living in concentration camps had to do to survive the war. That change has affected them physically and most importantly mentally. This is shown in the works of Tadeusz Borowski during his time as a prisoner. Borowski was a Kapo during World War Two, he was sent to a concentration camp as a political prisoner. “This Way to the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen” and “The Death of Schillinger” each focus upon what Borowski has done during his time in a concentration camp, revealing the horrible effects

An example of these harsh conditions is when in one the death camps he was in, Zyklon B was brought in to kill lice which makes it in Borowski’s words; “efficient killer of lice in clothing and of men in gas chambers" (“This Way to the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen” 1). In reality killing the lice was an excuse to bring in the poison into the camp. When the Nazi soldiers went to the bunks of prisoners, these forced them to give up their mattress and to strip the prisoners naked. Also as a reminder, they`re both men and women kept in these camps, there were no exemption on who had to be stripped naked. In Borowski’s words; “But all the same, all of us walk around naked: the heat is unbearable” in these conditions, a person could not walk around naked for a long time (“This Way to the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen” 1). Unfortunately this is what the prisoners had to deal with during their time in the camp. People would become sick from malnutrition and exhaustion, eventually they would die from working to much or people killed via the gas chambers or by a Nazi

In the short story “The Death of Schillinger” Borowski speaks about how a first sergeant is unexpectedly killed and the prisoner’s reaction to his untimely death. Indifference is everywhere in this story, as well as irony. The first example of indifference shown among the prisoners is when Sonderkommandos would have to load people off from a train and lead them to the gas chambers. Sonderkommandos were work units made up of German Nazi death camp prisoners and also helped administer other prisoners into the gas chambers. One of the other Sonderkommandos is explaining these events to Borowski stating “There have been cases of meeting relatives or friends. I myself had...", this depicts that even when a Sonderkommando knew someone, they had to lie to that person before they saw that person walk into the gas chamber (Borowski 145). This is a heartbreaking situation for both the Sonderkommandos and the prisoners, because neither of them could help each other without both of them dying. These indifferent choiceless choices lead to pain and suffering, they may also make someone go insane from the guilt of the choiceless choice and asking themselves “What if?” questions as well as their self worth. Another example of indifference is when the same Sonderkommando continues telling the tale about how a fight occurred between a