This Way For The Gas Ladies And Gentlemen

The abstraction behind the term empathy is easily argued as one of society’s greatest misconceptions, actively acting as a redoubtable paragon of delusion. Much of this idea is founded upon the belief that the general collective are inherently good people. However, the concept, through its delusive facade, is repeatedly betrayed in the media as well as in various works of classical and modernized literature. As effectively portrayed in the novel, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, as well as in the film, The Boy in Striped Pyjamas directed by Mark Herman, this self gratifying concept created by society is recurrently illustrated and personified through the events of the holocaust. The basis of this argument is engendered by the belief that relationships— amatory or platonic— are radically based off the findings of common interests, more specifically those developed between the protagonist and supporting characters of each given story. This concept of empathy, although perceived in leading roles, is a non existent trait among humans that is recreated purely in the interest of convenience further demonstrating its delusory nature. Through friendships formed by elements of relatability, the struggle-some attempts at being sympathetically rounded, and prompted acts of benevolence that work in the favour of self image, this quality of empathy as argued inherent in humans is proven to be nothing more than an inventive trait idealized in fictitious characters.

How much longer could the Jews of Sighet withstand fighting for their lives, facing unbearable hunger, and striving to push forward as insignificant people? In the memoir Night, dehumanization was when the barbarous Nazis mistreated the Jewish citizens. The Nazis made the Jews feel as if they were not human. The Nazis had a profusion of starving, humiliation, brainwashing, severe labor, and painful murders of innocent Jewish citizens. There was no feeling stronger than the loss of humanity the horrific events that the Jewish population faced.

The book, Survival in Auschwitz, depicts the story of an Italian Jew in a a concentration camp with unfathomable conditions. The prisoners here are treated as animals and pieces, their primary task to serve the German officers. The SS officers, and all the other men in a position of authority at this camp, try their very hardest to break the souls of the captives and reduce them the number tattooed on their arm. While the Nazis try to destroy the men in many ways throughout the course of this novel, the two things that demonstrate their dehumanization most strongly, are? the process the prisoners undergo upon arrival at the camp, and the way the selections of who will live or die are carried out.

In the documentary This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen, Tadeusz Borowski gathers multiple different experiences whether it was directly or indirectly of the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a genocide in which Adolf Hitler Nazi’s Germany and its collaborators during World War II killed six million jews. One of the most important aspects of this autobiography is the identification of the author as actually the main character. He is one of the prisoners at the concentration camp in Auschwitz where numerous jews are being exterminated. He had to learn how to accept this style of living to make it “home”, even though he was not Jewish.

In the book Night written by Elie Wiesel, dehumanization is a large part of the lives of Jews in concentration camps. Night is a memoir capturing the memories of Eliezer Wiesel’s of his eight months of living in a concentration camp when he is fifteen years old. There, Wiesel along with the rest of the prisoners, are tortured everyday, being dehumanized physically, mentally, and spiritually until they are unrecognizable. Physically, inmates in concentration camps are brutalized like animals.

Have you ever been faced with overwhelming inhumanity?I believe we all have at least once in our lifetime. In the memoir, Night the narrator Elie Wiesel recounts a moment he saw “Three “veteran” prisoners, needles in hand, tattooed numbers on our left arms. I became A-7713”(Wiesel 42).The inhumane circumstances of the camp has lead to being dehumanized. This is just one of the several themes related to inhumanity circumstances that the book “Night” describes. Two significant themes related to inhumanity discussed in the book are about the horrific struggles the Jews have went through, the dehumanizing and the forced torture they were put through are losing faith/hope and are feeling unbalanced with who they are.

“Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my god and turned my dreams to ashes” (Wiesel, 34). Dehumanization is the process of depriving a person or group of positive human qualities. In his book “Night”, Eli Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, dehumanizes Jewish prisoners through the loss of personal identity, brutal living conditions they endured, and how everyone was primarily focused on their own well-being. “I became A-7713 from then on, I had no other name” This quote mainly highlights when Elie Wiesel identity is completely abolished and replaced by a humiliating identification number. It puts a spotlight on the loss of personal identity and the reduction of human beings to the mere numbers in the concentration camps.

This quotation highlights the extreme circumstances that led to the breakdown of familial bonds and basic human compassion. Wiesel narrates, "There was a stampede. " Dozens of starving men fought desperately over a few crumbs" (Wiesel 100). This previous statement exemplifies the degradation experienced in the camps where the instinct for survival overrides any semblance of empathy or familial love. Going further, the erosion of humanity in the face of extreme adversity emphasizes the emotional toll of dehumanization on its victims.

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

The victims of the Holocaust, as told by Elie Wiesel in his novel, Night, suffered a loss of identity and struggled to maintain their humanity. It is the same phenomenon of dehumanization that is the source behind the painful experience of Abby Honald Those who victimize are able to do so because the process of dehumanization elevates their self concept and desensitizes them to the evils they inflict. For example, in the Stanford prison experiment there were 24 students chosen from the 75 that had applied. 12 randomly chosen to be “guards” while the remaining 12 were the “prisoners”.

When read for the first time, “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen” could complicate the true meaning behind the ironic story and the minutiae used by Borowski to portray his experiences at the concentration camp in Auschwitz. The first chapter of this novel displays how survival and death have a close relationship, as well as how the political hierarchy is subdued to the events befalling. With a lack of morality the narrator becomes a key constituent to the facilitator’s efforts, that is the persecution of the Jews and anyone deemed worthy of death. The overturn of values of Tedeusz reflects on how the civilization as a whole is in a sense suffocated by Nazi control. Not only is it essential to endure these issues in order to survive,

The lucid evidence of the physical and mental toll the camps took on the Jewish prisoner population successfully reinforces compassion, along with sympathy, within his readers for the situations the Jewish people in Germany had to face

INTRO:Tadeusz Borowski is a polish poet and short story writer who grew up in a time during the holocaust. He published most of his works for the underground press as they were brutally honest from his personal experience. He struggled in search of good moral values despite his Nazi occupation. In his short story “This way for the gas, ladies and gentlemen” was set in a concentration camp in Auschwitz. The narrator was a polish prisoner who worked under Nazi rule, we can assume it is based on Borowski’s real life.

The theme that highlights the brutalities in the Holocaust and how they are represented includes man’s inhumanity to man, which is displayed thoroughly within both memoir and film to reveal a deeper meaning. The theme of man’s humanity to man can be viewed from the differing perspectives of both Wiesel and Spielberg, however providing a similar viewpoint on how the brutalities of the Holocaust were represented. In the first instance, a German SS officer decides to throw a singular piece of bread onto a train full of starving, helpless Jews purely for his entertainment (p.101). This event somewhat illustrates and validates the cultural assumption of the Nazi regime being evil by displaying the brutality and treatment of the Jews through the theme of man’s inhumanity to man. However, the cultural assumption can be argued through Oskar Schindler’s actions.

Primo Levi, in his novel Survival in Auschwitz (2008), illustrates the atrocities inflicted upon the prisoners of the concentration camp by the Schutzstaffel, through dehumanization. Levi describes “the denial of humanness” constantly forced upon the prisoners through similes, metaphors, and imagery of animalistic and mechanistic dehumanization (“Dehumanization”). He makes his readers aware of the cruel reality in the concentration camp in order to help them examine the psychological effects dehumanization has not only on those dehumanized, but also on those who dehumanize. He establishes an earnest and reflective tone with his audience yearning to grasp the reality of genocide.