Survival of Nazi Atrocities and Borowski’s Narrative Techniques in This Way To The Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

946 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Conditions in concentration camps

Tadeusz Borowski’s “This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen” is a story told by Tadek, the diminutive of Tadeusz, recounting the Nazi atrocities that took place in Auschwitz. In his rendering of daily life in Auschwitz, Borowski explains his role as a kapo: a non-Jewish inmate who works and schemes to survive amid daily slaughter. In the ‘concentration universe’ social relations are determined by access to basic goods needed for survival, like food and clothing, and by the surplus of these that can buy their possessor a place in society (Kennedy 160). Tadek works his way up the inmate social latter in order to survive in the camp for so long. His tactics include bartering for privileges and goods, lying and stealing. By doing this he is able to survive in such barbaric conditions as Auschwitz. As the story goes on, Tadek’s emotional wall begins to come down and you see that he does indeed feel guilty and has empathy for all of the transports who are sent to the crematorium. In Borowski’s “This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen”, he discloses the survival techniques that Tadek uses while in captivity of the Germans through narrative techniques such as symbolism, tone and characterization in order to portray him as a likeable character and humanize him as the story goes on.
Symbolism is portrayed in the story through the dehumanization of the prisoners. At the beginning of the story, Borowski dehumanizes the other inmates by comparing both Tadek and them to animals. He says, “All of us walk around naked. The delousing is finally over, and our striped suits are back from the tanks of Cyclone B solution, an efficient killer of lice in clothing and of men in gas chambers” (Borowski 9). This description opens the story in a very cr...

... middle of paper ...

...n down as he describes very intimate exchanges with transports such as the grey-haired woman and the beautiful blonde lady.

Works Cited

Borowski, Tadeusz. This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen: “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen”. (1959), pp. 9-29.

Boyarin, Jonathan, and Daniel Boyarin. "Self-exposure as theory: The double mark of the male Jew." Rhetorics of Self-making (1995): 16-42.

Kennedy, Ellen. This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski. History Workshop , No. 14 (Autumn, 1982), pp. 160-164.

Power, Chris. "A Brief Survey of the Short Story Part 35: Tadeusz Borowski." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 26 Aug. 2011. Web. 28 Nov. 2013.

Vedder, Barbara. This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski. Review by: J. J. Maciuszko. World Literature Today , Vol. 51, No. 4 (Autumn, 1977), pp. 649-650.

Show More
Related

  • Death At Auschwitz Rhetorical Analysis

    532 Words  | 2 Pages

    Rudolf Vrba uses irony to highlight the absurdity of the reality of life in Auschwitz. Rudolf recounts his memories of July 17th, 1942, his seventeenth day in the camp. The officers and prisoners were preparing for the arrival of Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, a high ranking SS officer.

    Read More

  • The Common Theme Of Dehumanization In Night By Elie Wiesel

    1009 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout the Nobel Peace Prize award winner Night, a common theme is established around dehumanization. Elie Wiesel, the author, writes of his self-account within the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. Being notoriously famed for its unethical methods of punishment, and the concept of laboring Jews in order to follow a regime, was disgusting for the wide public due to the psychotic ideology behind the concept. In the Autobiography we are introduced to Wiesel who is a twelve year old child who formerly lived in the small village of Sighet, Romania. Wiesel and his family are taken by the Nazi aggressors to the Concentration camp Auschwitz were they are treated like dogs by the guards. Throughout the Autobiography the guards use their authoritative

    Read More

  • John Updike’s A & P, Richard Wright’s The Man Who Was Almost a Man, and James Joyce’s Araby

    1298 Words  | 3 Pages

    Updike, John. “A&P”. The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Eds. R.V. Cassill and Richard Bausch. Shorter Sixth Edition. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2000. 864 - 869.

    Read More

  • Dehumanization in the Holocaust

    920 Words  | 2 Pages

    Murders inflicted upon the Jewish population during the Holocaust are often considered the largest mass murders of innocent people, that some have yet to accept as true. The mentality of the Jewish prisoners as well as the officers during the early 1940’s transformed from an ordinary way of thinking to an abnormal twisted headache. In the books Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi and Ordinary men by Christopher R. Browning we will examine the alterations that the Jewish prisoners as well as the police officers behaviors and qualities changed.

    Read More

  • Totalitarian Government: Hitler and Stalin

    1102 Words  | 3 Pages

    Following the beginning of the Second World War, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union would start what would become two of the worst genocides in world history. These totalitarian governments would “welcome” people all across Europe into a new domain. A domain in which they would learn, in the utmost tragic manner, the astonishing capabilities that mankind possesses. Nazis and Soviets gradually acquired the ability to wipe millions of people from the face of the Earth. Throughout the war they would continue to kill millions of people, from both their home country and Europe. This was an effort to rid the Earth of people seen as unfit to live in their ideal society. These atrocities often went unacknowledged and forgotten by the rest of the world, leaving little hope for those who suffered. Yet optimism was not completely dead in the hearts of the few and the strong. Reading Man is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag by Janusz Bardach and Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi help one capture this vivid sense of resistance toward the brutality of the German concentration and Soviet work camps. Both Bardach and Levi provide a commendable account of their long nightmarish experience including the impact it had on their lives and the lives of others. The willingness to survive was what drove these two men to achieve their goals and prevent their oppressors from achieving theirs. Even after surviving the camps, their mission continued on in hopes of spreading their story and preventing any future occurrence of such tragic events. “To have endurance to survive what left millions dead and millions more shattered in spirit is heroic enough. To gather the strength from that experience for a life devoted to caring for oth...

    Read More

  • Myth of Courage Exposed in The Things They Carried

    2673 Words  | 6 Pages

    Passaro, Vince. "The Things They Carried (Review)." Harper's Magazine. 299.1791 (1999): 80. Expanded Academic ASAP.

    Read More

  • Technological Advancements of World War !

    980 Words  | 2 Pages

    Web. The Web. The Web. 05 Feb. 2010. http://www.firstworldwar.com/weaponry/gas.htm>.

    Read More

  • Heroism During The Holocaust: The Bielski Brothers

    1665 Words  | 4 Pages

    “If you save one life it is as if you have saved the world” ( zmdhfgcsmjv ). Heroism is not defined by the number of people who know your name or the numbers of awards you have received. However, heroism is defined by the impact an individual or a group of individuals makes on other’s lives. The Bielski Brothers were three men who made it their mission to save Jewish men, women, and children during the Holocaust. Not only did they save lives on a daily basis, but they were able to stop Nazi efforts. The impact they have made is monumental; today tens of thousands are alive because they decided not to give up. Even though the brothers risked their lives on a daily basis, they did not view themselves as heroes.

    Read More

  • The Heroes of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried

    1963 Words  | 4 Pages

    Passaro, Vince. "The Things They Carried (Review)." Harper's Magazine. 299.1791 (1999): 80. Expanded Academic ASAP.

    Read More

  • This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen

    1234 Words  | 3 Pages

    The sullen narrative This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen poignantly recounts the events of a typical day in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. The author, Tadeusz Borowski, was Polish Holocaust survivor of Auschwitz, the series of death camps responsible for the deaths of the largest number of European Jews. Recounted from a first-person point of view, the novel unfolds at dawn as the unnamed narrator eats breakfast with a friend and fellow prisoner, Henri. Henri is a member of Canada, the labor group responsible for unloading the Jewish transports as they arrive into the camps. They are interrupted by a call for Canada to report to the loading ramps. Upon the arrival of the transport, the narrator joins Henri in directing the prisoners to either life, in the labor camps, or to death, in the gas chambers. In reality the path is neither one of life or death, rather it is routing prisoners to inevitable death or immediate death. Regardless of how many times he is asked, the narrator refuses to disclose to the transport prisoners what is happening to them or where they are being taken. This is camp law, but the narrator also believes it to be charitable to “deceive (them) until the very end”(pg. 115). Throughout the day the narrator encounters a myriad of people, but one is described in great detail: a young woman, depicted as being unscathed by the abomination that is the transport. She is tidy and composed, unlike those around her. Calmly, she inquires as to where she is being taken, like many before her, but to no avail. When the narrator refuses to answer, she stoically boards a truck bound for the gas chambers. By the end of both the day and of the novel, the camp has processed approximately fifteen thousand p...

    Read More

  • Similarities And Differences Between Elie Wiesel And Primo Levi

    1391 Words  | 3 Pages

    Thousands of people were sent to concentration camps during World War Two, including Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel. Many who were sent to the concentration camps did not survive but those who did tried to either forgot the horrific events that took place or went on to tell their personal experiences to the rest of the world. Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi wrote memoirs on their time spent in the camps of Auschwitz; these memoirs are called ‘Night’ and ‘Survival in Auschwitz’. These memoirs contain similarities of what it was like for a Jew to be in a concentration camp but also portray differences in how each endured the daily atrocities of that around them. Similarities between Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi’s memoirs can be seen in the proceedings that

    Read More

  • Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

    591 Words  | 2 Pages

    2Somerville, John and Ronald E. Santoni, ed., Social and Political Philosophy, New York, NY, Anchor Books, 1963, pg. 143-144

    Read More

  • If This Is a Man, by Primo Levi

    1111 Words  | 3 Pages

    Setting out with his arrest by the fascist militia in December of 1943, the text conforms to Primo Levi’s experience in the succeeding twelve months as an inmate in the National Socialists’ Monowitz- Buna concentration camp, seven kilometers east of Auschwitz. Upon arriving in the camp, the first-person narrator, Primo Levi, who holds a doctorate in chemistry, embarks on a world that renders him astonished; simply by making literary notes to Dante’s Inferno can he manage to draw its contours. After the degrading intake procedures, he actualizes that the objective of the place to which they have been brought is the psychological and physical devastation of the inmates. Inmate Levi, “Number 174517,” discovers more about the camp and the inhumane circumstances there....

    Read More

  • Use of Narrative in John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

    998 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, by John Boyne, significantly distorts the truth of the Holocaust in order to evoke the empathy of the audience. This response is accomplished by the author through hyperbolizing the innocence of the nine-year old protagonist, Bruno. Through the use of dramatic irony, Boyne is able to both engage and involve the audience in the events of the novel. Although it is highly improbable that a son of a German high-ranking Schutzstaffel (SS) officer would not know what a Jew is and would be unable to pronounce both Fuhrer and Auschwitz, (which he instead mispronounces as ‘Fury’ and ‘Out-with’ respectively, both of which are intentional emotive puns placed by the author to emphasize the atrocity of the events), the attribution of such information demonstrates the exaggerated innocence of Bruno and allows the audience to know and understand more than him. This permits the readers to perceive a sense of involvement, thus, allowing the audience to be subjected towards feeling more dynamic and vigorous evocation of emotions and empathy towards the characters. Fu...

    Read More

  • Analysis Of If This Is A Man By Primo Levi

    1060 Words  | 3 Pages

    Primo Levi was an Italian Jewish Anti-fascist who was arrested in 1943, during the Second World War. The memoir, “If this is a Man”, written immediately after Levi’s release from the Auschwitz concentration camp, not only provides the readers with Levi’s personal testimony of his experience in Auschwitz, but also invites the readers to consider the implications of life in the concentration camp for our understanding of human identity. In Levi’s own words, the memoir was written to provide “documentation for a quiet study of certain aspects of the human mind”. The lack of emotive words and the use of distant tone in Levi’s first person narration enable the readers to visualize the cold, harsh reality in Auschwitz without taking away the historical credibility. Levi’s use of poetic and literary devices such as listing, repetition, and symbolism in the removal of one’s personal identification; the use of rhetorical questions and the inclusion of foreign languages in the denial of basic human rights; the use of bestial metaphors and choice of vocabulary which directly compares the prisoner of Auschwitz to animals; and the use of extended metaphor and symbolism in the character Null Achtzehn all reveal the concept of dehumanization that was acted upon Jews and other minorities.

    Read More

More about Survival of Nazi Atrocities and Borowski’s Narrative Techniques in This Way To The Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

Open Document