This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

            When read for the first time, "This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen" could complicate the true meaning behind the ironic story and the minutiae used by Borowski to portray his experiences at the concentration camp in Auschwitz. The first chapter of this novel displays how survival and death have a close relationship, as well as how the political hierarchy is subdued to the events befalling. With a lack of morality the narrator becomes a key constituent to the facilitator's efforts, that is the persecution of the Jews and anyone deemed worthy of death. The overturn of values of Tedeusz reflects on how the civilization as a whole is in a sense suffocated by Nazi control. Not only is it essential to endure these issues in order to survive, but it also portrays the characteristics and the lack thereof morals and shows the inhumanity of the Nazis. Details such as the "Red Cross van drives back and forth, back and forth, incessantly: it transports the gas that will kill these people." (38) During a first read details such as this were looked over, it was simply just a van with a red cross transporting gas to kill people, during a second read, the reader realizes the irony behind the van in the sense that the "Red Cross" was set up to aid those in need and ultimately save lives, this "Red Cross" was used to take lives, but, was it really taking lives or making it easier so they wouldn't have to endure the hard labor set fourth and still end up dead, just with a prolonged short few days or weeks? The narrator arrives at Auschwitz as a political prisoner when the policy on extermination changes, three weeks earlier "Aryans" (Intro) stopped being sent to the gas chambers, with that he wedges himself in the middle of this "political hierarchy" that existed even in a concentration camp. Was it a coincidence that when describing the setting it went hand in hand with this very hierarchy that existed within the camp? "Below us, naked, sweat-drenched men crowd the narrow barracks aisles or lie packed in eights and tens in the lower bunks.