Analysis
Tadeusz Borowski’s best short fiction was written within a period of only two to three years, and therefore it may seem futile to speak of his “development.” Virtually all the works in his two major collections reflect either directly or indirectly his experiences in Auschwitz and other camps; they are alike in expressing despair, a sense of being caught up in a world that has lost meaning, and a concern with what it means to continue living in such a world. Yet there are noteworthy differences between the earliest stories, which appeared in Bylimy w Owicimiu (we were in Auschwitz) and then along with others, in Poegnanie z Mari (farewell to Maria), as opposed to those in Kamienny wiat (world of stone). The first works are among his longest and tend to be episodic, relying for their effect on chronicling the events of a night, a day, or a few weeks. The latter works are shorter, more concentrated; they describe a single incident or situation, and they sometimes deal with later experiences: the liberation from the camps, or the immediate postwar period.
“Auschwitz, Our Home [A Letter]”
“U nas, w Auschwitzu” (“Auschwitz, Our Home [A Letter]”), which tellingly employs the German rather than the Polish (Owicim) spelling for the camp, is perhaps the most clearly autobiographical of the early stories. It takes the form of a letter, or perhaps a series of letters, about his training as a medical orderly, and includes, particularly toward the end, details about his arrest and his being sent to Auschwitz, which is often used as the single name for what was actually a complex of camps: Auschwitz, Birkenau; Harmenz. The crematoriums were at Birkenau; when the narrator is transferred from there to Auschwitz, life improves for him. The title hints at the bitter irony that underlies the story, for to those who know Birkenau, Auschwitz is indeed a home, a kind of idyll. Here, those in training are relatively well dressed; there are many smiles and even a wedding.
Typically for Borowski, the story contains events but no plot as such; it relies for its effect on the accumulation of observations and incidents. The narrator frequently uses his precamp experiences and values in his effort to analyze the camps, but more effective are his glimpses into the everyday reality that he witnesses. Early in the story, he describes what passes for a cultural center at the Auschwitz camp: It contains a music room, a library, and a museum. The piano, however, cannot be played during work hours, the library is always locked, and the museum contains only photographs confiscated from prisoners’ letters. Upstairs in this cultural center is a bordello, where female prisoners are kept for the pleasure of those in authority. The narrator then notes that women can also be found in the experimental section, where they may be operated on or are purposely infected. He later describes an incident in which several trucks pass by full of naked women; they scream to the men that they are being taken to the gas chambers and plead to be saved, but not a single person among the ten thousand or so looking on tries to help. The almost visceral effect of the story arises from the unexpected and almost casual intrusion of the horrors, the contrast between them and the ordinary life that seems only a step away, and perhaps worst of all the acceptance of this world on the part of all who are in it.
“Day at Harmenz”
In “Dzie na Hermenzach” (“Day at Harmenz”), Borowski takes his readers more...
(This entire section contains 1720 words.)
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directly into the brutality of camp life. At first glance the story simply seems to chronicle a day at a work site, with each incident providing another glimpse into the hunger, fear, and exhaustion that formed the lot of prisoners. The individual scenes are sufficiently memorable that it is easy to lose sight of Borowski’s artistry: He does not merely pile up a number of unrelated incidents but in fact creates a series of leitmotifs and gives the entire piece a sense of both drama and structure. Thus, in the first scene, readers are introduced to Becker, who had been placed in charge of his fellow prisoners at a previous camp and hanged his own son for stealing bread. Becker, desperate for food, says that the sign of real hunger is when one person regards another as something to eat. In the final scene, this same Becker has been “selected” to be sent to the ovens; still hungry, he asks the narrator for a bit of food, and the narrator—in a noteworthy gesture—tells him to eat his fill. The true emphasis of the story, though, is on the narrator’s survival. Danger is everywhere; he must use all his cunning to get food himself and to outwit the guards and fellow prisoners. Unstated but clearly implied is that his well-being may result in the suffering or deaths of others, but he accepts that necessity, just as Becker believes that he was right to hang his own son. In this world, a different morality prevails.
“This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen”
Nowhere are Borowski’s chief themes presented more harrowingly than in the story that serves as the title piece for the English edition of his works, “Prosz pastwa do gazu” (“This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen”). It is the narrator’s job to help unload the trains of newly arrived prisoners at Birkenau. Scene after scene describes the confusion, the violence, and the terror as people are loaded onto the trucks that will take them to the gas chambers. Meanwhile, the narrator seems to move about in a daze as he carries out of the railway cars the bodies of naked infants, holding several in each hand, as though they were chickens; gathers the clothing and valuables left behind, while an SS man collects the gold and currency; and witnesses instances in which tormented individuals emerge momentarily from the mass of victims.
Perhaps the most searing moment occurs when a young woman, desperate to live, tries to run away from her own child, who chases after her with his arms out. A Russian prisoner, also helping unload the transport, knocks the woman off her feet, swears foully at her, and heaves first her and then her child onto one of the trucks going to the gas chambers. The SS guard approves the prisoner’s actions with a gut gemacht (“well done”). Borowski does not allow his readers the comfort of simply blaming the German guards for the horrors—what about the woman who tries to abandon her own child to the ovens, or the prisoner who knocks her down, or for that matter the narrator who does nothing to help? Borowski does not answer these questions; he merely presents them for his readers to ponder.
Yet the desire to live does not obliterate all sense of right and wrong. The narrator’s companion, a Frenchman named Henri, constantly stuffs tomatoes, sardines, and other delicacies into his mouth; although he seems to care little for those whom he is leading to death, in fact he is trying to hide the truth from them to soften their last moments. The narrator, whose dulled perceptions fail to shield him from the horror, vomits during his night’s work. No one survives without doing evil, but survival does not necessarily mean losing all awareness of right and wrong.
“The Supper”
The later stories, usually only three or four pages long and concentrating on a single incident or theme, can be equally disturbing. Thus “Kolacje” (“The Supper”) describes in graphic detail the execution of some twenty Russian soldiers while the other prisoners, starving after a day’s work, are forced to watch. Those ordered to shoot the Russians from behind at point-blank range have dressed for the occasion, but the only concern they show is not to get splattered by the shattered heads. Typically for these stories, “The Supper” depends on a single shock at the very end rather than on a litany of horrors. At first, it is not clear why the prisoners have swarmed over the execution site before heading off to supper, but in the last lines the narrator tells how a fellow prisoner tries to convince him that human brains are so tender that they can be eaten raw. With those few words the focus abruptly shifts from the execution to the inhuman suffering of the prisoners who are still alive.
When the stories deal with the end of the war or its aftermath, Borowski’s emerging anti-Western feelings come to the fore. Thus in “Milczenie” (“Silence”), a young American officer comes to a barracks housing former prisoners. Speaking through an interpreter, he promises them that those who committed crimes in the camp will be punished and asks them to refrain from any illegal acts. The former prisoners receive his remarks with applause and cheerful shouts; after he leaves, they drag out a hated tormentor, whom they had gagged and hidden, and beat him to death. The chief point, though, is less the surprise ending than the naïve good nature of the American, whose words betray a total inability to comprehend the perspective of those who had suffered in the camp.
“World of Stone”
The story that reveals the most about the effect that the camps had on Borowski may be the title story of his second collection, “Kamienny wiat” (“World of Stone”). He tells of the way in which he has stopped caring for his appearance, of how he takes long walks through the city and feels only indifference. In the evening, he goes back to his apartment and attempts to discover within himself some kind of feeling toward the people he has seen, for he wants to write an immortal epic about this world that seems to be chiseled from stone. On that note the story ends, but it is clear that he has lost some vital connection with the world—people are only part of a whirling mass, and he can no longer perceive individual, human concerns. The emptiness that Borowski expresses foreshadows his suicide only a few years later; in the final analysis, Borowski was not able to outlive Auschwitz.