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Tadeusz Borowski's concentration camp stories were based on his own experiences surviving Auschwitz and Dachau. In spare, brutal prose he describes a world where the will to survive overrides compassion and prisoners eat, work and sleep a few yards from where others are murdered; where the difference between human beings is reduced to a second bowl of soup, an extra blanke Tadeusz Borowski's concentration camp stories were based on his own experiences surviving Auschwitz and Dachau. In spare, brutal prose he describes a world where the will to survive overrides compassion and prisoners eat, work and sleep a few yards from where others are murdered; where the difference between human beings is reduced to a second bowl of soup, an extra blanket or the luxury of a pair of shoes with thick soles, and where the line between normality and abnormality vanishes.

Published in Poland after the Second World War, these stories constitute a masterwork of world literature. If you have seen the documentaries of History channel on these concentration camps, you will know that what Borowski has written is True events. If you have seen the documentaries of History channel on these concentration camps, you will know that what Borowski has written is absolutely true. It seems fantastic and surreal to us because we cannot imagine that someone might have gone through such hardships and torture. But it happened. All survivors of these camps have testified to the stories.

Raw footage of these camps are also available. You will have to search the archives of History channel. It is pretty extensive. I found this book very difficult to read. Not like Joyce or Proust or Faulkner, but because – when exactly do you read this? In the evening after a good dinner?

Well, at bedtime then? Not unless you want nightmares. I have read a few of these concentration camp memoirs, which, strangely insultingly, are classified as FICTION when they are, of course, the truth.

But here, in the concentration camp world, reality reads like fiction, it is true. Tadeusz Borowski writes with a heavy black humour I found this book very difficult to read. Not like Joyce or Proust or Faulkner, but because – when exactly do you read this? In the evening after a good dinner? Well, at bedtime then?

Not unless you want nightmares. I have read a few of these concentration camp memoirs, which, strangely insultingly, are classified as FICTION when they are, of course, the truth. But here, in the concentration camp world, reality reads like fiction, it is true. Tadeusz Borowski writes with a heavy black humour about Auschwitz, which some may find almost unbearable. I don’t have so much of a problem reading the cold histories of the theory and practice of hell, as it has been called. I now have a certain level of knowledge.

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I can distinguish between the wildcat camps of 1937-39, the political prisoner camps like Dachau, the work camps like Mauthausen, and the terminal points of the three extermination camps Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor, which really should be much more famous than they are. (But their fate was to exist very temporarily, for a year or 18 months, then to be bulldozed, and for the ground to be ploughed, and tilled, and for a farmhouse to be built and a family installed there who were to say they had farmed the land of Belzec for generations. Unlike the camps which were liberated, and therefore photographed. No photos of Belzec!) And I can compare all those to the empire that was Auschwitz.

So the nuts and bolts of the holocaust have become well known to me over the years. Reading the stories of one who was there and was able to write after liberation, that’s another thing. It is jolting and upsetting. It’s someone real. The first jolt comes on the third page of the title story (and what a title, surely one of the greatest titles in literature).

Here we have the bantering conversation of some of the men working on the “Canada” team. These were prisoners whose job was to get the Jews out of the cattle trucks, up the ramps and off to the crematoria. (“All these thousands flow along like water from an open tap” he says.) Once that was done they picked up all the luggage which the Jews could not, of course, take with them. In this luggage was a whole lot of food – good stuff too, wine, cured meat, sausage, cheese, you name it. The Canada team were able to “organise” some of this stuff back to their barracks, and there they dined well. They also had their pick of the clothes in the luggage, so they dressed pretty well too.

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Imagine, prisoners living well at Auschwitz! It is almost over. The dead are being cleared off the ramp and piled into the last truck. The Canada men, weighed down under a load of bread, marmalade and sugar, and smelling of perfume and fresh linen, line up to go. For several days the entire camp will live off this transport.

For several days the entire camp will talk about “Sosnowiec-Bedzin”. “Sosnowiec-Bedzin” was a good, rich transport. So now we overhear a conversation between two of these prisoners. He appreciates the good things these transports of Jews are constantly bringing. But – how long can this go on?

Surely, sooner or later, they’ll run out of people! And then what?

No more sausages, for sure. Well, it was a worry. The stories here inhabit what Primo Levi calls the grey zone, the compromised, corrupted world where there is no innocence, only degrees of guilt. Borowski had a “good Auschwitz” in the way many people had a “good war”. They didn’t die, and it wasn’t all ghastly all the time. He describes the recreational facilities in Auschwitz. You’ve imagined the gas chambers and Sonderkommando and the ovens, now imagine this: Right after the boxing match I took in another show – I went to hear a concert.

Over in Birkenau you could probably never imagine what feats of culture we are exposed to up here, just a few kilometres away from the smouldering chimneys. Just think – an orchestra playing the overture to Tancred, then something by Berlioz This book is overshadowed by the author’s suicide at the age of 29. This is a distraction, like other author suicides. The work always stands by itself, it is not placed by the grotesque act of suicide into a sphere beyond judgement.

Readers encounter the reality inside these words, not outside. And inside these stories the atmosphere is oppressive, the fumes acrid, the stench is unbearable, the company not the best. When I finished this book I looked around.

The room was quiet and warm, the fire was on (spring is here, but it’s still cold). One of the cats jumped onto the windowledge for another few hours of birdwatching.

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I remembered we’re out of marmalade and thanked Tadeusz Borowski for reminding me of that. Do I recommend this book? I can’t say that I do.

This is an account of Auschwitz, in the form of a series of first person short stories, from someone who is still begrimed and drenched in its depravity. Because he wrote it so soon after his experience Borowski has managed to put little if any distance between himself and what he’s describing. The tone of the book, perfectly captured in its title, is thus deeply disturbing.

In fact it reads like a suicide note. Concentration camp stories tend to focus on the fortitude and humanity of inmates. R This is an account of Auschwitz, in the form of a series of first person short stories, from someone who is still begrimed and drenched in its depravity.

Because he wrote it so soon after his experience Borowski has managed to put little if any distance between himself and what he’s describing. The tone of the book, perfectly captured in its title, is thus deeply disturbing. In fact it reads like a suicide note. Concentration camp stories tend to focus on the fortitude and humanity of inmates. Rarely do we see the darker side of what people did to survive. Rarely do we see the hierarchies among the inmates. Rarely do we see how successfully in their evil genius the Nazis stripped individuals of all moral sense.

There’s the sense here that the inmates are like heroin addicts, survival their daily fix. They have their close inner circle of useful contacts and friends but are numbed to indifference about the plight of everyone outside that circle. They will even hurt these others if there’s something to gain, even if that something is merely a moment’s pleasure, the pleasure of accruing power. Power, as he states, is earned by the exploitation of others. People will always seek power and perhaps never more so than when they are made to feel powerless. Perhaps the most memorable image in the book is of a game of football the narrator is playing while a transport arrives at the ramp.

He registers the arrival of a train full of Hungarian Jews; the next moment his attention strays from the game the entire convoy has disappeared. “Between two throw-ins in a soccer game, right behind my back, three thousand people had been put to death.” He narrates this as though it is of little more emotional significance than an unloading process in a factory. This book is as disturbed as it is disturbing.

Borowski, you feel, deliberately eschewed all temptation to make his material palatable, subject in any way to reason. He wanted to speak from the ground, not from the meditated hindsight of a library or study. Probably what it does better than any other Holocaust book I’ve read is show the extreme difficulty of processing what happened in the camps or even finding the appropriate moral tone with which to talk about it. True horror is something that can only be swallowed in sips, lest we drown in its sorrow. You need to read these 150 pages.

You, whomever you are. You will feel like the luckiest guy or gal ever after reading it, for you are alive and free and not being forced to do unforgiveable things. The 20-something author, husband, and father-for-three days was once a poet and aspiring writer.

As a Polish teenager, he was arrested and taken to work as a slave laborer at Auschwitz and Birkenau. At gunpoint, True horror is something that can only be swallowed in sips, lest we drown in its sorrow. You need to read these 150 pages. You, whomever you are. You will feel like the luckiest guy or gal ever after reading it, for you are alive and free and not being forced to do unforgiveable things. The 20-something author, husband, and father-for-three days was once a poet and aspiring writer.

As a Polish teenager, he was arrested and taken to work as a slave laborer at Auschwitz and Birkenau. At gunpoint, he unloaded the cattle cars of Jewish families and Gypsy families. He carried and sorted their belongings to be stored in 'Canada' - the warehouse that held wealth. He witnessed thousands of moms and kids being escorted onto trucks that trundled along a little road that wound into a pretty little patch of birch trees while their strong husbands were made to walk in a different direction. 'Several other men are carrying a small girl with only one leg. They hold her by the arms and the one leg. Tears are running down her face and she whispers faintly: 'Sir, it hurts, it hurts.'

They throw her on the truck on top of the corpses. She will burn alive along with them.' By the time that Auschwitz and its more evil little sister Birkenau were built, a good deal was known about keeping masses of humanity free of infectious disease.

Dead slaves cannot work in the mines or factories or build roads or play concertos or test how best to treat gunshot wounds, right? The SS doctors knew that typhus was spread by lice, so fumigating blankets and bedding along with clothing was important. Decontaminating the hair and bodies of those who already have lice was important for the welfare of all, correct? Yes, you may be free of these awful insects, but regretfully you have been in close contact with hundreds of others on the train. We regret the way you had to be transported, but it was important for your safety to get you here quickly. Our apologies. So, step this way to the bathhouses, please!

Leave your soiled clothes for now. Let's get you and the children cleaned up, and then how about a thick bowl of steaming soup?

Maybe some chilled water and a salty tomato-onion salad instead. Tadeusz Borowski does not shirk his responsibility in what was perpetrated at these two camps. Yes, he would have been shot or gassed or beaten to death with a shovel handle had he refused or revolted. But still - the guilt.

As a Polish political prisoner, he was allowed to receive packages of food from his family in Warsaw and shared it with those who had little. From working on the ramp as part of the Canada crew, he was then transferred to work as a roofer and saw with a birds eye view what went on below him. Camp doctors later trained him as an orderly, and he did what he could to ease suffering. But the atrocities he saw and his own culpability never left him. Dead babies, live children thrown into fire pits, cannibalism by those most starved, and the never ending zombie-like march of hundreds of thousands to the gas chambers ruined his soul. He had been engaged to a girl before his arrest, and through some sort of miracle they were able to find one another after liberation. He began writing again and they got married.

He published this very collection of stories and received rave reviews from Polish critics. Three days after the birth of their baby daughter, the immensity of it all became too much. Tadeusz was 29 when he killed himself by opening a gas jet in his apartment. This way for the gas, ladies and gentlemen! His black humor lived on.

The book is only 150 pages - you can handle it and should. 'Great columns of smoke rise from the crematoria and merge above into a huge black river which very slowly floats across the sky over Birkenau and disappears beyond the forests.' Naked, famished bodies, with sunken faces and deathly eyes, congregate on their wooden bunks. Drenched in sweat from an unbearable heat they munch on stale bread with burning throats as dry as scorched sand.

Tadeusz Borowski is one of them. Outside the cattle carts are arriving, and that can only mean one thing. The unforg 'Great columns of smoke rise from the crematoria and merge above into a huge black river which very slowly floats across the sky over Birkenau and disappears beyond the forests.' Naked, famished bodies, with sunken faces and deathly eyes, congregate on their wooden bunks. Drenched in sweat from an unbearable heat they munch on stale bread with burning throats as dry as scorched sand. Tadeusz Borowski is one of them.

Outside the cattle carts are arriving, and that can only mean one thing. The unforgettable screams, the confusion, the madness, the horrendous stench of death. Men, women, children, infants.

Welcome, your extermination awaits. Brutal, ruthless, relentless, the cold eyes of the SS look on, their well oiled machine is in full working order, a machine spewed up onto the earth from the guts of hell. There are 12 short accounts of Borowski's concentration camp experiences, Borowski was arrested by the Gestapo in Warsaw in 1942, shortly after publishing his debut book of poetry, before being sent to his new home. Starting with the chillingly named 'This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen' before ending with the sombre sounding 'The World of Stone'. This is without question one of the most powerful books I will ever read. But it's essential for it to be out there, as a record of the horrors of Auschwitz told from the perspective of someone who lived right at it's core. And it saddens me to think there are writers out there who try to make a quick buck by inventing a fictional work based around the Holocaust, knowing only to well as long as it's a tearjerker, it will most probably fly off the shelves, and even get a movie squeezed out if lucky.

Sorry, I am not having it, and find it disrespectful to the dead and those who survived to tell the tale. Without the likes of Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi or Borowski himself, the world would be left with nothing more than guesswork. This is too important for that. Make no bones about it, reading this hurt, deeply, right to the pit of my stomach, many will find it too unsettling as it is not “lyrical” enough, not sympathetic enough. He offers us no theories, and not a single redeeming possibility. Unembellished, because, as he wrote, “there can be no beauty if it is paid for by human injustice, nor truth that passes over injustice, nor moral virtue that condones it.” Surely there was no need to ask for sympathy?

Perhaps that is why this book is less well known than others that followed. We do not like what's in front of us, it's too disturbing. Borowski wrote this book when the memories were fresh, not older looking back over time. He was still a young man and still desperately trying to find something to believe in. All he had was his nightmares, and he wrote them down. Nothing ever relieved his pain. Atrocity is piled upon atrocity For that he gets my greatest respects.

He committed suicide in 1951, aged just 28. Trough all the horror and carnage he writes considerably well, even in parts poetically, 'Suddenly I see the camp as a haven of peace. It is true, others may be dying, but one is somehow still alive', In the abundant of literature concerning the atrocity's of the 20th century, one rarely finds an account written from the point of view of an accessory to the crime.

In frank, dispassionate prose he simply opens his mind, it's never pleasant, but then it was never going to be. The precise reasons for his death are uncertain, as are many other details regarding this troubling witness to the Holocaust, but the dreadful power of his stories remains undiminished, It's a reading experience I will not forget, no matter how hard I try. This is not an ordinary book. This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen is a report of the man who survived. And this is a horrific testimony. Borowski’s prose, full of sharp and dispassionate descriptions, is so brutal and harsh, such dense that you barely can breath. At the same time Borowski’s writing is marked with strange indifference and some appalling calm while he tells about unimaginable atrocity and inhuman barbarism.

One of the most known stories is the title one when narra This is not an ordinary book. This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen is a report of the man who survived.

And this is a horrific testimony. Borowski’s prose, full of sharp and dispassionate descriptions, is so brutal and harsh, such dense that you barely can breath. At the same time Borowski’s writing is marked with strange indifference and some appalling calm while he tells about unimaginable atrocity and inhuman barbarism. One of the most known stories is the title one when narrator participates in unloading new transport what always offers occasion to gain some goods.

Bread, bacon, onion, milk and maybe a real champagne as muses Henri, the man who says that at least a milion people had passed through his hands. This unnerving story has something so ghastly unreal in itself but simultaneously we can sense, and it is almost palpable feeling, that everything's really happening. Newcomers are faltering in scorching heat, muddle-headed after several days in crowded wagons, completely unaware what will happen to them. And on the other side – camp prisoners, these chosen ones, to take their luggage, to separate value things, to live. And when you think it is over you can read for several days the entire camp will live off this transport.

For several days the entire camp will talk about “Sosnowiec-Bedzin”. “Sosnowiec-Bedzin” was a good, rich transport. Or another story titled People who walked on. There is a scene I find particularly shocking, when prisoners were playing football, yes, there was a life in Auschwitz too, while another transport arrived and Borowski knocks us out with such paragraph between two throw-ins in a soccer game, right behind my back, three thousand people had been put to death. I’m thinking about Borowski’s life in Auschwitz, then Dachau and after camp.

I’m wondering why he get involved later, like many other Polish writers, into communistic propaganda. Why he found communism so seductive. I’m trying to imagine myself on his place and I can’t.

Also his death, pills and, oh irony, gas. It’s such a shame that evil system caught up with him finally. Though I do not know which one it was. Malaparte said once it is a shameful thing to win a war. And to survive? Disturbing in the same way that the foreign film, 'Son of Saul' was for me.

It was unbearable to read more than a chapter or two at one time. The blurb on my book jacket conveys my thoughts perfectly. '.This collection of concentration camp stories shows atrocious war 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 be Disturbing in the same way that the foreign film, 'Son of Saul' was for me. It was unbearable to read more than a chapter or two at one time.

The blurb on my book jacket conveys my thoughts perfectly. '.This collection of concentration camp stories shows atrocious war 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.' Borowski wrote this collection of concentration-camp stories after surviving imprisonment in Auschwitz and Dachau from 1943 to 1945. He committed suicide in Warsaw in 1951 when he was only 29 years old.

It is difficult, with a moat of sixty years and an intellectual barricade of countless other World War II and Holocaust-related reading, to adequately begin to review this collection of short stories from Tadeusz Borowski. Falling back into the same reiteration of virtually all Holocaust/post-war writings is almost too easy: 'This book serves as a reminder of the atrocities of war.' , 'this book demonstrates how terrible man can be.' Etc, etc, ad infinitum. The sorts of blanket r It is difficult, with a moat of sixty years and an intellectual barricade of countless other World War II and Holocaust-related reading, to adequately begin to review this collection of short stories from Tadeusz Borowski. Falling back into the same reiteration of virtually all Holocaust/post-war writings is almost too easy: 'This book serves as a reminder of the atrocities of war.'

, 'this book demonstrates how terrible man can be.' Etc, etc, ad infinitum. The sorts of blanket recognitions and statements about Holocaust writing do not, in general, do either post-war mentalities, nor the atrocities of the event, justice: they provide an automated recognition of the war, but without truly instigating thought, consideration, and insight of what actually happened. In many respects, This Way for the Gas. Establishes itself as a remarkably unique piece of post-war Holocaust writing. While Borowski himself was a kapo in Auschwitz, his experience there was vastly different from many others who passed through the camp. His lifestyle was comparatively luxuriant: he was afforded packages from home, 'organised' (stolen) goods from around the camp, and generally held a position of relatively power over the fellow inmates.

Because he was a Pole (rather than a Jew or a Russian), Borowski possessed a substantial advantage over many of the most barbaric treatments at Auschwitz. Additionally, being selected as a kapo forced his participation in many of the very atrocities ocurring at Auschwitz: Borowski was likely feared and despised by many of the inmates under him in the camp's hierarchy.

The writing is terse, resigned, and strikingly detached. Concurrently with This Way for the Gas., I was reading 'Auschwitz' (by L. In this latter book, Rees stipulates that how many concentration camp workers managed to survive, despite the crushing mental and physical burdens, was in effectively detaching oneself from the surroundings. The behavior of detaching oneself from ones' environment is exemplified throughout 'This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen.' Borowski himself creates a mental barricade between himself and his surroundings; in one scene he discusses playing keeper during a football game with other inmates.

Between one out-of-bounds and a second, he sees a trainload (approximately five thousand) of people sorted, selected, and gassed only a few hundred meters from where he is playing. The frankness (and, to us, callousness - though at the time, such responses were likely appropriate and acceptable given the circumstance) of the prose makes Borowski's works difficult to read. Inevitably, there is the comparison to Wiesel's 'Night' (another magnificent piece of writing), but the similarities, outside of being narratives of concentration camp survivors, are few. While Wiesel's writing is humane, gutwrenching, and almost impossibly difficult to read, Borowski's is so lacking of humanity, warmth, and compassion that it's nearly more difficult to read than Wiesel's writing. Borowski doesn't seem to be completely devoid of humanity, but the demonstrated acceptance of the conditions around him do not provide as distinct a demarcation as Wiesel's writings: inmates are not consistently helpless victims, nor are SS guards always the most brutal of characters. Borowski's writing remains one of the most complex pieces I have ever read.

There are many levels to what he has written, and his reflections and thoughts are inconsistent with their acceptance and understanding of his environment. Like much else written during the time, he ultimately is an individual trying desperately to cope with a decidedly inhuman, catastrophic situation as best he can.

This one is difficult to rate. Not all the stories did engage me on a same level. I would definitely give a 5 for the title story. It's a unique testimony about prisoners unloading an incoming Transport.

It's powerful and haunting: 'The bolts crack, the doors fall open. A wave of fresh air rushes inside the train.

People.inhumanly crammed, buried under incredible heaps of luggage, suitcases, trunks, packages, crates, bundles of every description (everything that had been their past and was to This one is difficult to rate. Not all the stories did engage me on a same level.

I would definitely give a 5 for the title story. It's a unique testimony about prisoners unloading an incoming Transport. It's powerful and haunting: 'The bolts crack, the doors fall open. A wave of fresh air rushes inside the train. People.inhumanly crammed, buried under incredible heaps of luggage, suitcases, trunks, packages, crates, bundles of every description (everything that had been their past and was to start their future).

Monstrously squeezed together, they have fainted from heat, suffocated, crushed one another. Now they push towards the opened doors, breathing like fish cast out on the sand.' My expectations were very high, after reading the first short. But to be honest, the following stories didn't met those expectations.

And that was a shame, because all of them are certainly worth reading. Borowski gives a voice to the victims, who were reduced to beasts from the moment they were loaded into the cattle cars; and the ones that were lucky enough to survive the transport and the selection at the train ramp, saw their lives as prisoners reduced to nothing but a beastly struggle for life. Borowski understood this very well, and was painfully aware of the fact that he was no exception. Whatever the rating given to this collection of concentration camp stories, one thing is certain: it packs a powerful punch, and is unmissable if you even want to try to understand what the victims went through. '.in this war morality, national solidarity, patriotism and the ideals of freedom, justice and human dignity had all slid off man like a rotten rag. We said that there is no crime that a man will not commit in order to save himself.

And, having saved himself, he will commit crimes for increasingly trivial reasons; he will commit them first out of duty, then from habit, and finally - for pleasure. A mental-health episode involving too large a dose of mushrooms sobered me recently when I made a call (my first) to “000”. A dose of sheer panic mixed with latent paranoia convinced me I might die here, in a tiny town in country New South Wales where I “retreat”/housesit and look after the dog. In the aftermath, having bartered (or so it seemed) with two starched-uniformed paramedics for my freedom (“Call if you need us,” they said as they left, “but next time you don’t get a choice about comin A mental-health episode involving too large a dose of mushrooms sobered me recently when I made a call (my first) to “000”. A dose of sheer panic mixed with latent paranoia convinced me I might die here, in a tiny town in country New South Wales where I “retreat”/housesit and look after the dog.

In the aftermath, having bartered (or so it seemed) with two starched-uniformed paramedics for my freedom (“Call if you need us,” they said as they left, “but next time you don’t get a choice about coming to the hospital”), for days I could only read Borowski. Sleeping badly, having nightmares, deep into the house-stash (which I’d raided in the aftermath), alone and stuck far from friends and family, I found nothing else that gripped me or made sense. A few paragraphs, a page, a 3- or 7-page story – every burst was potent, helped to wake me, focussed my thought. In that state I wrote the following, for what it’s worth. The words may be clumsy, but the sentiment?

I stand by it. Tadeusz Borowski, a young writer approaching the peak of his craft, was imprisoned a few weeks after the rules were changed at Auschwitz: no “Aryans” would be gassed. Borowski knew that lies are one thing and pretence another. You lie to stay alive, to get ahead, in both camp and civilian life (where he rose to prominence in the Communist Party, admitted that he’d “stamped on the throat of his song” and killed himself at 28 after trying unsuccessfully to intercede in the prosecution of a friend and writer two weeks earlier).

But he was no criminal, no sadist. Not like Becker the ex-Poznan camp-senior who’d hung thieves “from the post” (hands behind their backs till their arms came out of their sockets) and “really known hunger” (“when one man regards another man as something to eat”). Or like First Sargeant Schillinger, killed when after taking a comely naked prisoner by the hand she “scooped up a handful of gravel and threw it in his face, and when Schillinger cried out in pain and dropped his revolver, the woman snatched it up and fired several shots into his abdomen.” Schillinger was lying face down, clawing the dirt in pain with his fingers. We lifted him off the ground and carried him – not too gently – to a car.

On the way he kept groaning through clenched teeth: “Oh Gott, mein Gott, was hab’ ich getan dass ich so leiden muss?” Schillinger, Becker – these are pretenders. To pretend that one life is more important than another. To pretend that they do what they do for any higher reason than to get. Borowski, in writing fiction (and it is fiction, by what magic I’m not sure), is lying, but not pretending. His picture of Auschwitz is so true and sure and moving because it treats of it as just another aspect of life.

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Yes there is horror, but not only horror. And for a man who after the war apparently gave in to the rhetoric of hate in his pro-party journalism, he writes here miraculously without hate.

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He feels for everyone, from soldiers to the condemned. He sees in everyone oppressor and oppressed. In this, his wisdom is profound. Compared to Borowski, I lead the life of an aristocrat. Life moves slow here, but I’m out of step. Hoping to catch a wave of experience, I fall back on self-destruction.

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For Borowski, catching or not catching that wave is irrelevant – he must ride it. From great suffering does not come great art, but suffering is sobering. To this most sobering of works about suffering I give thanks.

A hero neither in camp-life nor politics, Tadeusz Borowski was, briefly, a hero in art. Iggy Pop once said that when he got out front of a good rock band he didn’t feel anything, and he didn’t want to either.

Tadeusz Borowski is a benign Terminator – no pity, no pain. Or rather he has been that. He may be the anti-me experientially but I have lived his nightmares. So stupid, so Western, to ritually ingest poison to know what’s important.

Borowski, at 21, with his fiance in Birkenau shave-headed and covered in sores, knew it in his gut. Family, friends, freedom, home. If these were taken from me tomorrow and I was allowed one book I’d take Borowski.

He’s here right beside me, just in case. The best description of bread is a description of hunger Tadeusz Rozewicz Two or three weeks later I gave the book to my wife. She cried and cried. Borowski entered our shared experience.

Her tastes and mine are so different that I feel confident in stating bluntly: this is a masterpiece. Moving in the very best of ways, not exploitative, not cold. With any luck, this book may have helped changed my life.