This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

In “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen,” Henri is Tadek’s bunkmate who invites Tadek to join the crew that is tasked with unloading and emptying the freight trains. Unlike Tadek, Henri has been working on this crew for quite some time and is unaffected by the terrible things that shock Tadek. Henri, who is French, even comments on the awkwardness of handling train cars that come from around Paris, because he sometimes sees friends and acquaintances who are sent to the gas chamber. To Henri and many of the prisoners, working on the crew that unloads the freight cars is an opportunity to have the first pick of food and clothing. Henri demonstrates the way constant exposure to intense violence can be desensitizing, and how the human mind can rationalize terrible abuses in the name of self-preservation.

In “A Day at Harmenz,” Tadek confronts Becker and wishes him death. Becker is a Jewish man who had authority in a different camp and used his authority to punish and execute fellow prisoners who stole food. He even executed his own son, causing his surviving son to call for his death. Becker is consumed with hunger, which is why he considers stealing food to be such a terrible crime. He also steals food from Tadek, even though Tadek gave him an extra bowl of soup. Becker shows the way intense hunger can consume a person and cause them to commit unspeakable acts. Tadek, who is allowed to receive packages from home because he is not Jewish, has not experienced such depth of hunger. This is something that Tadek seems to learn by the end of the story, when Becker is selected to go to the gas chamber and pleads with Tadek to share his food so he doesn’t have to die starving. 

Mrs. Haneczka is a character in “A Day at Harmenz” who lives near the area where the inmates work. Although it is never clear who she is or what her relation is to the camp, she seems to be an outsider who is affected by the cruelty she sees. She gives them food, particularly Tadek, but refuses to give food to the Kapo whom she knows beats the workers he controls. She is not only giving, however, as she sometimes trades with the inmates (and not always fairly, as Ivan exclaims when he receives lard for the expensive soap he gives her). There is almost no perspective from the outside world in the stories, and Mrs. Haneczka stands in for those who have an idea about some of the horrors that occur in the camp. She is also compassionate and cries when she sees Ivan beaten for stealing a goose.

A Kapo is an inmate who has been charged with supervising other inmate workers, and the Kapo in “A Day at Harmenz” is a cruel, petty man who enjoys his authority and treats his workers badly. He demonstrates how a small amount of power can turn a person into a tyrant and has no qualms about punishing or killing other inmates. As an intimidation tactic, he orders Tadek to make four stretchers because he plans to kill four inmates by the end of the day. The Kapo is in the camp because he was arrested as a Communist, and he shows a brief moment of solidarity when he hears Tadek singing a Communist anthem. However, the Kapo is beaten and berated when one of the inmates steals a goose, showing that he is still only a low-level tyrant who must answer to those who do not consider him human. 

In “Auschwitz, Our Home (A Letter),” Witek trains alongside Tadek as a doctor. Witek stands out among Tadek’s fellow inmates, as he has not become desensitized to violence or complacent. After seeing an especially brutal prison guard take pleasure in finding new and creative ways to torture and kill other inmates, Witek realized that those who perpetuate such violence are not like other human beings and instead express a trait that the human race has evolved away from. Tadek identifies Witek as the kind of person who will take a stand and fight back, willing to kill to prevent others from being killed, just as he shot an S.S. dog that tried to attack the woman who is now his wife. Tadek views Witek as an extraordinary type of human being, just as Witek recognizes the torturers as different from other people.

In “The Death of Schillinger,” First Sergeant Schillinger is a loyal and brutal Nazi officer. He is infamous because he enjoys torturing and killing people and cannot be bribed. However, he is not entirely impersonal, as he shows when he decides to take an attractive woman out of the line for the gas chamber to rape her. Schillinger believes that his actions are correct, as he demonstrates when he is shot and cannot understand what he did to deserve suffering and death. Schillinger illustrates that Nazi soldiers committed atrocities because they were convinced that doing so was patriotic.

Although the Schreiber is never named, he is the man who possesses the titular package in “The Package.” The Schreiber is a Jewish man who manages to procure a clerical job in the hospital because he makes influential contacts in the camp. His job requires his complicity in the selection of sick Jews to send to the gas chamber, but until he becomes ill, it protects him from some of the harsher realities of the camp. The Schreiber shows how a person can hang on to their determination to survive, when faced with certain death. 

In “A True Story,” Tadek is in the hospital and gravely ill. Kapo Kwasniak exploits his power by demanding that Tadek still entertain him by telling him stories. The fact that he is only interested in true stories from Tadek’s life suggests that he feels entitled to Tadek’s experiences and private thoughts. However, after Tadek tells the story of the young boy with the Bible, Kwasniak decides that he does not want to hear any more and gives Tadek his coffee as well as a tomato from Kwasniak’s wife. This suggests that Kwasniak has some sort of shift in perspective. He experienced the death of the young man in Tadek’s story, and perhaps this knowledge of his will to survive is what softens him toward Tadek.