This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

The author and narrator, Tadeusz Borowski—Tadek for short—is incarcerated at the Auschwitz concentration camp, although his name is not identified in the first story. Tadek has just received his newly disinfected prisoner uniform. The prisoners are naked and sleeping without mattresses and blankets. Tadek eats breakfast with Henri, a Frenchman and a fellow prisoner, who is part of the so-called Canada detail, the prisoners who empty out the trains of new prisoners to be sent to the gas chambers, the crematorium, or to work in the camp. Those in the Canada crew have the first access to the food and clothing that the new prisoners brought with them. The day is hot, and Tadek and Henri are eating food sent in a package from Tadek’s family. Tadek asks Henri to find him some new shoes with the next transport.

A messenger enters and summons Henri and the Canada crew because a long-awaited, new train is arriving. Tadek joins them because the crew is shorthanded. One guard mocks a group of Greek prisoners who start to eat some rotten food they find, exclaiming, “For God’s sake, any minute you’ll have so much food to stuff down your guts, you’ll bust!” (34). The train arrives, and it’s packed full of people who are crying desperately for water and air. An S.S. officer warns the Canada crew, “Whoever takes gold, or anything at all besides food, will be shot for stealing Reich property” (36-37).

They open the train doors and order the people inside to pile their luggage and possessions in front of the train. One prisoner asks a guard what will happen to them and the guard pretends not to speak his language as, “It is the camp law: people going to their death must be deceived to the very end. This is the only permissible form of charity” (37). As the prisoners stream out of the train, their belongings are taken from them. Piles form of gold, jewelry, and food. Trucks, headed for the gas chambers, are crammed with women and children. The men who remain behind will eventually die, but they will work in the camp first. An S.S. officer keeps a tally of the trucks, counting the thousands upon thousands of people who are sent to be killed. Once the train is empty, an officer orders the Canada crew to clean up the bodies of infants that were trampled and abandoned on the transport. He orders them to give the bodies to the women to carry on the truck. The women resist and the officer fingers his gun until an older woman hastily agrees to take the corpses. To Tadek, she whispers, “My poor boy” (40).

Tadek asks, “Listen, Henri, are we good people?” (40). Henri scoffs at the question, but Tadek admits that he feels no sympathy or pity for these people and instead feels anger that they are the reason he must work. Henri asserts that this is a normal response. The work is difficult, and it is easier to take out one’s frustration and anger on the prisoners because they are weaker. Tadek recognizes a woman among the S.S. soldiers, a thin, sour officer who is there to assess the women and decide who ought to go to the camp to work instead of straight to death. As the Canada crew, desperately thirsty and hot, finishes loading the prisoners’ belongings into a truck, another train pulls in.

Tadek and the rest of the Canada detail are rougher with the new prisoners, tearing their belongings out of their hands. One child tries to follow a woman, calling her “Mama” and begging her not to abandon her. The woman insists that the child isn’t hers, frantic to join the group that will go to the camp so that she can live. Andrei, a Russian sailor, is disgusted that a woman would deny her own child, so he hits her and tosses her into the truck, throwing her daughter in after her. An attractive blonde girl emerges from the train and asks Tadek where they are being taken. Tadek doesn’t answer, thinking about her two possible fates: labor in the concentration camp or immediate death in the gas chamber. However, the girl simply says, “I know” (44), and heads toward the trucks.

Tadek goes back to work emptying the train, horrified at the growing piles of corpses. He tries to get away from them but receives a lash from an officer’s whip. The sun is beginning to set. A man and a woman cling to each other desperately until an officer kills the woman by stomping on her throat. Soldiers stack the disabled, the ill, and those who are unconscious in the same pile as the dead in a truck headed for the crematorium where they will be burned alive. The air is cooler now that the sun has set, but Tadek doesn’t think he can continue. Henri scoffs, telling Tadek that he has been doing this for months and handled about a million prisoners, adding, “The worst of all are the transports from around Paris—one is always bumping into friends” (46). Tadek asks Henri what he tells people he knows when he sees them, and Henri replies, “That first they will have a bath, and later we’ll meet at the camp. What would you say?” (47). Henri suggests that Tadek sit and hide quietly.

The next transport train roars in. A small girl manages to crawl out through the window and drop to the ground, clearly having lost her sanity on the train. An officer knocks the girl to the ground and shoots her. Tadek is near the train doors when they open, and the stench and the sight of the mass of unmoving people inside makes him sick. Ordered to unload the freight car, Tadek grasps the hand of what seems to be a corpse only to have the hand squeeze back. Tadek runs off to vomit, wishing that he were back at the camp. The people who emerge from the train are steeling themselves for the camp, not realizing that they are just going to die and have their bodies searched for any gold or valuables that they might have hidden. The man who tallies the prisoners rounds his final figure to 15,000. There is enough food to feed the camp for days. As the Canada crew finishes, the sun begins to rise, and Tadek can see the smoke rising from the crematorium as the people from the train are already burning.