This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen (Paperback, Revised ed.)

The nightmare become daylight reality and pursued with a cold logic... Auschwitz, Birkenau. Tadeusz Borowski spent the years from 1943-45 in concentration camps; released at the end of the war, he could not come to terms with "the world of stone," killed himself. But he had already written, if not the "immortal epic" he envisioned, a series of incisive, indelible stories that form a cumulative portrait of life in a concentration camp. The narrator Tadek is a non-Jew, a Polish student, a prison laborer who at times plays soccer while people walk on to the fake bathhouses, where the prison diversion is the procession of the doomed and the only charity, deceit as to their destination. Where Red Cross trucks transport gas for the daily round and the pall of the chamber hangs over each prisoner's head. Where on a night without soup even human brains are considered for edibility. "There is no crime that man, will not commit in order to save himself," the author declares toward the close of these insights into the determination to survive. The anguished vision cost him his life; it remains a telling legacy. (Kirkus Reviews)

Published in Poland after World War II, this collection of concentration camp stories shows atrocious crimes becoming an unremarkable part of a daily routine. Prisoners eat, work, sleep, and fall in love a few yards from where other prisoners are systematically slaughtered. The will to survive overrides compassion, and the line between the normal and the abnormal wavers, then vanishes. Borowski, a concentration camp victim himself, understood what human beings will do to endure the unendurable. Together, these stories constitute not only a masterpiece of Polish - and world - literature but stand as cruel testimony to the level of inhumanity of which man is capable.

General

Imprint:	Penguin Classics
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Series:	Penguin Modern Classics
Release date:	November 1992
First published:	August 1992
Authors:	Tadeusz Borowski
Introduction by:	Jan Kott
Translators:	Barbara Vedder • Michael Kandel
Dimensions:	198 x 130 x 14mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - B-format
Pages:	180
Edition:	Revised ed.
ISBN-13:	978-0-14-018624-6
Languages:	English
Subtitles:	Polish
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Biography & autobiography > General Books > Humanities > History > History of specific subjects > Military history Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > War & defence operations > Battles & campaigns Books > Humanities > History > World history > From 1900 > Second World War Books > Humanities > History > European history > From 1900 > Second World War > The Holocaust Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > Political control & influence > Political oppression & persecution > General Books > History > European history > From 1900 > Second World War > The Holocaust Books > History > History of specific subjects > Military history Books > History > World history > From 1900 > Second World War Books > Biography > General Promotions
LSN:	0-14-018624-7
Barcode:	9780140186246

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