This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

After the war, the concentration camp survivors are shuffled around to different camps, now used as housing for displaced persons, and Tadek ends up in West Germany. Eventually, Tadek and three friends move into an apartment that belongs to a Nazi who is staying with relatives. Tadek and his friends dream of leaving Europe, but they are also searching for their missing loved ones among the 10 million displaced persons who were freed from the camps. The four friends invite a famous Polish poet, along with his wife and mistress, to stay with them. The poet reads what the four survivors have written of their book about their experiences in the camp and finds it pessimistic and depressing. This leads to a passionate discussion in which Tadek and his friends assert that “in this war morality, national solidarity, patriotism and the ideals of freedom, justice and human dignity had slid off man like rotten rag” (168). They insist that men will do anything, no matter how appalling, to survive. Once they have crossed certain lines in their own ethics and morality, they will continue to do so.

The four men argue that the world is no different from the camp where “the weak work for the strong, and if they have no strength or will to work—then let them steal or let them die” (168).