This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

The short stories in Tadeusz Borowski’s collection, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, were selected from two earlier volumes of stories, Farewell to Maria and The World of Stone, both published in Poland in 1948. The collection was translated into English in 1967 and published in the United States. Borowski’s stories are based on his experiences as a concentration camp inmate at Auschwitz-Birkenau during the Holocaust. His fiancée, Maria Rundo, was arrested as part of the Polish liberation movement and Borowski, who was participating in illegal schooling and leftist publishing, was arrested a few days later at age 21. He spent two months in prison and was then transported to Auschwitz, where he would remain until the camp was liberated in 1945. In 1946, Borowski returned to Poland where he was reunited with Maria, whom he married later that year. In 1951, only a few days after his wife gave birth to their daughter, Borowski committed suicide by inhaling the gas from a stove at the age of 28.

Plot Summary

Each story is told from the perspective of a narrator who is ostensibly interchangeable with the author—who is called Tadek, short for Tadeusz, in the second story.