43 pages • 1 hour read
Tadeusz BorowskiThis Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1946A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Story Summaries & Analyses
Story 1: “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen”
Story 2: “A Day at Harmenz”
Story 3: “The People Who Walked On”
Story 4: “Auschwitz, Our Home (A Letter)”
Story 5: “The Death of Schillinger”
Story 6: “The Man with the Package”
Story 7: “The Supper”
Story 8: “A True Story”
Story 9: “Silence”
Story 10: “The January Offensive”
Story 11: “A Visit”
Story 12: “The World of Stone”
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaSymbols & Motifs
Overview
Food represents hope and survival, and another meal means staving off death for a bit longer. In certain instances, a variety of food represents privilege. The title story, in which Tadek helps to unload the people from the train to rummage through their belongings for food, shows how hunger makes the prisoners desperate enough to assist in sending innocent people to the gas chambers. As a Polish political prisoner, Tadek experiences hunger but is allowed to receive packages from home that contain food. Becker (“A Day at Harmenz”), however, embodies the idea of endless hunger. At another camp, he prioritized food over everything, even killing his own son for stealing food. However, he also steals food from Tadek, and at the end of the story, when Becker is to be sent to the gas chamber, he pleads with Tadek to feed him so he can finally be full. Tadek, recognizing starvation as torture and food as a human right, allows him to eat even though he despises him.
Becker says to Tadek, “Real hunger is when one man regards another man as something to eat” (54). In “A Day at Harmenz,” this is figurative, meaning that hunger causes a person to see other humans as disposable in the quest for food. This statement takes on a literal meaning in “The Supper,” when the Kommandant denies dinner to an entire camp full of starving people and in response, the ravenous inmates fall upon a group of executed Russian soldiers to eat their remains. Dispassionately, Tadek relates that one man explains that “human brains are, in fact, so tender you can eat them absolutely raw” (156). Those who are starving will do anything for food. Women who are ill or pregnant are easily lured to the gas chambers with the promise that they will be taken to the hospital and receive milk and bread. They trade sexual favors for food. Ivan (“A Day at Harmenz”) risks his life to procure a goose to cook and eat. Those who are desperate and still have the drive to live will do anything to feed themselves.
The Crematorium
The crematoria loom over Auschwitz, overloaded and constantly churning out the black smoke from burned bodies. In “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen,” Tadek describes how some of the living who were sick or disabled would be burned alive rather than going through the gas chambers first. The crematorium may be the most efficient way to dispose of millions of bodies, but it also has the effect of dehumanizing and deindividualizing the victims who are burned there. Considering the many millions who died in the concentration camps and the millions more who survived and were displaced after the war, many people lost loved ones and never learned what became of them. The crematorium reduces victims’ bodies to unidentifiable ash and bone, ensuring that their families cannot find or properly bury them.
In “Auschwitz, Our Home (A Letter),” Tadek writes about the way they grow accustomed to the camp, having, among other things, “learned to live on intimate terms with the crematoria” (111). This is especially true for the prisoners who work there, herding endless numbers of people into the gas chamber and then burning their bodies. In “The Death of Schillinger,” the foreman describes the efficiency with which they have learned to move people through the process of death, commenting that they attempt to give some dignity by averting their eyes from their naked bodies. Abbie, Tadek’s old friend from his work Kommando, tells Tadek about the innovative way he has discovered to burn even more bodies quickly. Working at the crematorium gives prisoners a social status as well, because they have access to the clothing and belongings of those who die.
In “Auschwitz, Our Home (A Letter),” Tadek remembers the first time he saw the crematorium, telling Witek about the night he arrived at the camp. In the darkness, the new prisoners could see the flame, which looked as though it “were burning on top of a gigantic mountain” (127). After the war, Tadek accuses the Germans of maintaining the belief in moral and religious systems while “the smoke from the crematoria still hovers above the forests” (168). The black smoke represents the destruction and erasure of the victims of the camp. The four crematoria of Auschwitz stood as a constant threat of death to those incarcerated there, consuming about 900,000 bodies.
Serial Numbers
Perhaps one of the most enduring images of the Holocaust are the serial number tattoos that were inscribed on the arms of those who were incarcerated. Inmates were robbed of their identity and individuality. Their heads were shaved, and they were forced to wear the same uniform. The permanence of the tattoos suggests that incarceration in the camp was not like incarceration in prison, and prisoners were meant to be identifiable for life. Additionally, because Jewish law prohibits tattoos, the serial numbers were an act of desecration (although there is no truth to the rumor that Jewish people with tattoos cannot be buried in Jewish cemeteries, and an exemption to the rule is certainly extended to Holocaust survivors). Like the tattoo, the scars and trauma from the camp are permanent, lasting long after the war ends. They serve as a reminder of an inhuman moment in human history.
The removal of individuality means that the serial number is the only consistent mode of identification, and identification as an inmate was rarely for something positive. When the guard catches Tadek discussing the news about the war in “A Day at Harmenz,” although he has interacted with Tadek already, he demands his serial number. Tadek carefully maintains his distance to avoid allowing the guard to see it. Serial numbers are used for official reports and write-ups, or for marking down a prisoner who has been selected for the gas chamber. Additionally, because they are given in sequential order, they designate which prisoners have been incarcerated for a long time and which have not. In “Auschwitz, Our Home (A Letter),” Tadek explains that there is a social hierarchy that favors those with the lowest serial numbers. He even quips sarcastically that it is unfortunate that he was not arrested sooner so he could have a lower number.
