This motto defined the fate of millions of Europeans between 1941 and 1945. As Nazi Germany gained control of one country after another during World War II, civilians were killed and soldiers were mistreated in ways that have been classified as war crimes. These crimes, however, seem insignificant when compared to the mssive, deliberate, and well-planned extermination of more than 15 million persons in what is termed the "Holocaust" ("Holocaust" 1). This genocide of staggering proportions was carried out with frightening efficiency by a well-organized German bureaucracy in which nothing was left to chance. This five-year orgy of slaughter was a deliberate and systematic destruction of an incredibly large percentage of a race of people.

Since this dark period of world history, much has been written about the events of the Holocaust. It is a subject that has been covered by people of all races and with different perspectives. Many who have published articles, books, treatises, and essays on the subject are either themselves survivors or descendants of victims and survivors. Most of the observations were made by those who lived a constantly threatened existance.

One author who touched on the Holocaust with a clear and fresh perspective was Tadeusz Borowski. Borowski was in his early twenties when he was released after a long period of residency in the concentration camps at Dachau and Auschwitz. He published his first collection of stories one year after his release. Before he reached 30 years of age, Borowski took his own life in a somewhat ironic fashion: gas.

In order to offer a concise understanding of Tadeusz Borowski, his works, his life, and his death, we should more closely examine some of the events leading up to and encompassing the Holocaust during World War II.

There is much speculation surrounding the beginnings of the Jewish Holocaust. Germany was suffering severely from the social, political, and economic repercussions of World War I and its subsequent Treaty of Versailles. Along with most of the rest of Europe, Germany had experienced wounds reopened by the crash of the New York Stock Market in 1929. In 1933, Hitler became chancellor of Germany and history was to take a monumental shift.

In looking for a scapegoat for his country’s economic woes, Hitler and his ranks found comfort in blaming the Jewish population. Most of the large number of Jews living in Germany at the time were well-educated, intellectual, and peaceful. They could "easily be portrayed as the worst enemies for having usurped and corrupted German culture" (Yahil 18). The justification for this blame was "the relatively large number of Jews in the free professions, the press, literature, nd the theatre, which was in any event a cause of envy" (18). What happened next has been described by some as a civil war. Hitler began a campaign of terrorism directed at the Jews and increased his own ranks by appealing to the frustration and anger of the Germans. Blaming the Jews for their hardships gave the Germans a sense of purpose and this exploded the membership of the Nazi party.

During the beginning of Hitler’s tenure as chancellor, Jews were not a large portion of the entire population, but they were concentrated. About 69.5% of all Jews lived in five neighborhoods in Berlin (Yahil 21). They were involved heavily in brokerage, finance, and commerce. "The Jews lacked representation in Germany’s two main centers of economic power: heavy industry and the working class" (22). These centers consisted mainly of the middle class. The middle class were the most affected by the depression and these were the people who were most influenced by Hitler’s propaganda.

This propaganda began with governmental action. Several laws were written in an effort to make things more difficult for Jews in Germany to go about their normal lives. These laws were "a sign of things to come." Some of these laws included the "dismissal of actors and other artists ‘not of Germany descent’" (30). The Jewish ritual method of slaughtering animals was banned, and certain laws regarding voting rights were affected in similar methods used by Americans against blacks before the Civil Rights Movement. Although the Jews could have appealed, "the Jews well understood the real threat conveyed by this formal ratification of the Nazis’ intentions" (30). The campaign continued with the banning of mixed marriages in Germany and making it possible to dismiss Jews from any job where they might "exert their destructive, antinational or international influence" (30).

One of Hitler’s obstacles included forbidding Poles from attending secondary schools and colleges. Tadeusz Borowski was educated by attending underground classes. The Germans began the first of many of their "roundups" on the day Borowski was taking his college final exam. Borowski would later refer to this day as "Graduation on Market Street." Several students came out of the school and immediately headed into alleys and the outskirts of town in an effort to hide. Borowski called his exam a "European certificate of maturity" (13).

The Jews reacted to this treatment in the press. Leni Yahil, in her book The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, quoted an article published in the CV paper on July 1, 1932, which said:

We German Jews will not be frightened by vain threats. We have strong nerves. With clenched teeth we will defend every patch of land and fight courageously for equal rights down to the last detail. A handful of people with justice on their side are determined to fight, are prepared to make sacrifices, are proud of their glorious history and their timely religion, are Germans living on the soil of the German fatherland. We shall endure and we shall prevail. (31)

Little did the Jews know to what extent they would have to fight, endure, and prevail. Racism was running rampang and had found a new outlet for dispersion. Jakob Wasserman was a German Jewish writer. He wrote the following powerful and harsh words which expose the irrational phenomenon of hatred of the Jews. Yahil set out Wasserman’s words:

Vain to adjure the nation of poets and thinkers in the name of its poets and thinkers. Every prejudiced one thinks disposed of breeds a thousand others, as carrion breeds maggots.

Vain to interject words of reason into their crazy shrieking They say: He dares to open his mouth? Gag him.

Vain to act in exemplary fashion. They say: We know nothing, we have seen nothing, we have heard nothing.

Vain to seek obscurity. They say: The coward. He is creeping into hiding, driven by his evil conscience.

Vain to go among them and offer them one’s hand. They say: Why does he take such liberties with his Jewish obtrusiveness?

Vain to help them strip off the chains of slavery. They say: No doubt he found it profitable.

Vain to counter the poison. They brew fresh venom.

Vain to live for them and die for them. They say: He is a Jew. (34)

Hitler’s propaganda included claims that since Jews were the main cause of Germany’s political problems, they must be exterminated. German authorities betgan storming into cities, towns, and villages and assembling large numbers of Jews. On one occasion in particular, German authorities rounded up 30,000 Jews, marched them into the forest and slaughter them in two-days time. "The Germans boasted of . . . exterminating approximately 35,000 Jews" (257). Most of these victims had been the old, the sick, the women and children, who were left behind when the majority of the population had fled.

As things went from bad to worse, thousands of Jews were rounded up and sent to concentation camps in a "resettlement project" developed by the Germans to keep their Jewish threats under control.

Tadeusz Borowski was finishing school and writing poetry during the early stages of this "resettlement project." In order to get around Hitler’s ban on press or publications by Jews, Borowski had personally copying his first collection of poetry on an underground mimeograph machine. He was arrested a few weeks later when he walked into a trap set by the Nazis and which had already trapped his fiance. After two months in jail, Borowski was shipped to Auschwitz.

In a sense, both Tadeusz Borowski and his fiance were lucky not to be gassed immediately. By that time, "Aryans" were not sent to the chamber except in special cases and only in large groups.

During his tenure at Auschwitz and later Dachau, Borowski held jobs that ranged anywhere from physical labor to night watchman to hospital orderly. While working, he was able to observe and write about what has been described as "one of the cruelest of testimonies to what men did to men, and a pitiless verdict that anything can be done to a human being" (12).

One of Borowski’s most famous short stories is entitled "This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen". This story is a day in the life of a member of the labour Kommando. This was a group of camp prisoners who were recruited to assist in unloading the freight trains that came to the nearby depot. The protagonist in this story, believed to be Borowski himself, has a friend on the labor gang who brags about the special privileges he gets by helping out the SS men at the train station. The main character decides to go with him one day to see for himself. The emotions that exist during this experience are described and experience by the reader so well because of Borowski’s ability to depict the graphic horror of what takes place at the station. His vivid description of cleaning the freight cars after the people are forcibly removed is sickening. His view of the train car full of "human excrement and abandoned wrist watches . . . trampled infants . . . with enormous heads and bloated bellies" creates an image in the reader’s mind that will not soon be forgotten (39). This image is only outdone by his very next sentence where he talks about carrying out these bodies "like chickens, holding several in each hand." It is difficult to fathom human beings involved in anything that must be described this way.

Borowski’s protagonist is progressively sickened by what he sees in that one day. When he attempts to take a moment to vomit, he is threatened by the SS men to get back to work. After spending an entire day in this experience, the character begins to see that compared to this day at the station, his life at the concentration camp is a haven of peace.

One description that illustrates the cruelty and well- organized efficiency of the German SS is Borowski’s constantly referring to the activities and attitudes of these men as "businesslike." What they are doing to other human beings is nothing more to them than a day at the office. The organized method for the gassing beings is set out in a clear image in another of Borowski’s short stories entitled "The People Who Walked On." In that story, Borowski describes:

From the warehouse roofs, you could see very cleary the flaming pits and the crematoria operating at full speed. You could see the people walk inside, undress. Then the SS men would quickly shut the windows and firmly tighten the screws. After a few minutes, in which we did not even have time to tar a piece of roofing board properly, they opened the windows and the side doors and aired the place out. Then came the Sonderkommando (A labor gang composed mostly of Jews and assigned specifically to crematorium duties. Borowski served on one of these gangs in at least one of his stories) to drag the corpses to the burning pits. And so it went on, from morning till night -- every single day (96).

The efficiency is perhaps one of the most eerie points of the experience of the Holocaust.

Considering everything that Tadeusz Borowski saw and lived through during this period of history, it is understandable that his life was in turmoil long after he was released from the concentration camps. He had seem more and experienced more in his young life than most of us can imagine. On one happy note, his fiance almost made it out of the camps and they were married a short time later.

When Borowski published his first stories, a controversy began. The world was split into the righteous and the unrighteous: the heroes and the traitors. Some said his works were immoral and decadent as are often titles given to works that might touch too close to the truth.

Tadeusz Borowski was ambitious and was now having a chance to play an important role in society. He became a member of the Communist party and continued to write short stories and poetry, as well as articles for local periodicals in Warsaw. His writings were referred to as the work of an activist.

All of the chaos in his life did not, however, lead to a clear motive for Borowski’s suicide. He had made two attempts before finally succeeding only three days after his wife gave birth to their daughter. About two weeks before his suicide, the friend whose apartment he was "trapped" in by the Nazis, was arrested. Borowski had tried to step in and was told his friend was a traitor to the Communisty party. "Borowski never lived to see his friend’s trial" (21).

Although the reasons for Tadeusz Borowski’s suicide went with him to his grave, it would be easy to assert that the hypocrisy of his life in the concentration camps had to create a stress to his human soul. Here was a young man, a Jew, in a camp, trying to survive and observing atrocities that killed off a million of his fellow Jews.

In the end, Tadeusz Borowski found his exit from his memory in his premature death, putting an end to what must have been incomprehensible years of suffering and anxiety due to his observations and experiences of the Holocaust.


Works Cited

Borowski, Tadeusz. "The People Who Walked On." This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. Ed. Philip Roth. New York: Penguin Books, 1959.

--- "This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen." This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. Ed. Philip Roth. New York: Penguin Books, 1959.

"Holocaust." Compton’s Encyclopedia, Online Edition. America Online. Nov. 10, 1994.

Yahil, Leni. The Holocaust. The Fate of European Jewry: 1932-1945. Trans. Ina Friedman and Haya Galai. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.