preview

This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen

Decent Essays

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 …show more content…

This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen aided my understanding of the Holocaust with its overarching themes of dehumanization, death, and detachment. Throughout the entire novel the theme of dehumanization is particularly evident in both the prisoner workers and the transport prisoners. The Nazi guards are said to have “beefy” (pg. 41) faces, while an S.S. officer is described as having a “rat-like smile” as she “sniffed around” (pg. 41) the ramp. Prisoners are referred to as “standing around like sheep” (pg. 48). Starving Greek prisoners are compared to “huge human insects” (pg. 35). Even the transport trucks are called “mad dogs” (pg. 41). Everyone is treated and processed like livestock. “Trucks drive around, loading up lumber, cement, people” (pg. 34), is yet another example of how a human life was lowered to that of a mere object. A corpse is simply a “mound of meat” (pg. 45), and dead babies are carried out of the transport “like chickens, several in each hand” (pg. 39). The poisonous compound Cyclone B used to kill the prisoners was “an effective killer of lice in clothing and of men in gas chambers” (pg. 29). Second is the theme of death. Death became a currency for the prison workers: work for the Nazis for a second bowl of soup, an extra blanket, a pair of shoes, a piece of bread, etc… The prisoners literally live off of death. They cannot afford to be human. “All of us live

Get Access