This Way for the Gas Analysis Essay

“Death wrapped itself around me till I was stifled.” Elie Wiesel was a young boy, only 15 years of age, when he encountered the tortures of the largest concentration camp, Auschwitz. Another Auschwitz survivor, Susan Pollack, experienced the horrors of her family being taken away right before her eyes (Connolly) .The life stories of Elie Wiesel and Susan Pollack are two examples showing the graveness of the mass butchery and abuse the Auschwitz prisoners endured, therefore portraying their immense joy when they were liberated by the Soviet soldiers on January 27,1945 (Wiesel 92).

In the documentary This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen, Tadeusz Borowski gathers multiple different experiences whether it was directly or indirectly of the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a genocide in which Adolf Hitler Nazi’s Germany and its collaborators during World War II killed six million jews. One of the most important aspects of this autobiography is the identification of the author as actually the main character. He is one of the prisoners at the concentration camp in Auschwitz where numerous jews are being exterminated. He had to learn how to accept this style of living to make it “home”, even though he was not Jewish.

‘You come in through the front gate, but the only way you leave is through the chimney, the guards had told us when we arrived. Ha! Look at me now, I wanted to shout, walking out through the front gate, the way I came in! I had survived the ghetto. I had survived Plazów, and Wieliczka, and Trzebinia, and Birkenau, and now Auschwitz. I was going to survive it all. I was going to be alive when the Allies liberated us. This I

The Holocaust can be described by facts, pictures, history lessons, among others, that can make a strong and lasting impression on an individual. However, testimonies are when the true horrors of this event become real. Testimonies are personal. Their authentic emotions, thoughts, and feelings are wrapped up in a little box with a red bow and given to the public as a fragile gift. Survivor Manya Friedman wrote, “I had little confidence when I started. My hands were so shaky I could barely read my own writing. As I started writing, I was given confidence, support, and encouragement. If I can do this, then you can too” (“The Transition”). Due to her strength and many others, individuals who weren’t affected by the holocaust are fortunate to be provided with such thoughtful insight about how the lives of these Jewish individuals were affected and remain affected. Even so, their experiences are something we will never be able to fathom.

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski, published in 1959, is a short story about a concentration camp prisoner's experience working on Canada, the group of inmates responsible for helping unload the incoming prisoner transports. The narrator bares witness to many atrocities throughout the story, which are made more impactful to the reader through Borowski’s use of impactful dialogue, figurative language, casual and matter-of-fact tone, and repetition. These literary elements allow Borowski to draw the reader in more than he would otherwise, and make them feel almost as if they are experiencing the horrors along with him.

“We’ll be fine honey… don't give up we'll see eachother again I promise”, my mother said as they pulled us apart into different rooms. Her voice was shaken, we had been been sent to Auschwitz and during the trip here she cried and pleaded the entire time. As if they would suddenly have sympathy for us… during our entire time here there was not one commander that at least seemed to have any sympathy or remorse for us… they actually seemed to be enjoying our suffering. My mother was gone now and I, along with a few other dozen of us were escorted to another room. We had just been examined by the doctors and the people who I was with were mainly young girls. Many with their mothers… they all looked at me as if I was some lost puppy. I could

In Borowski’s short story, the narrator is a Jewish prisoner living in the Auschwitz concentration camp. The main reason that this character is still alive is because he has taken on work as a member of a forced labor gang called Kommando “who helped to unload the incoming transports of people destined for the gas chambers” (Borowski). The narrator keeps himself fed by the scraps of food left behind on the trains full of new prisoners being sent to their deaths; he is even forced to lie to the prisoners to tell them that they will be fine, so as not to incite anger or resistance. The narrator feels remorse for his role in deceiving the incoming Jews and, unlike some of the other members on the Kommando, he hates himself for what he is doing. The narrator is suffering from survivor’s guilt a “term used to describe the feelings of those who…emerge from a disaster which mortally engulfs others” (“Survivor Guilt…”). In comparison, Art Spiegelman, who is a second-generation survivor, writes in length about the way he feels about his own brand of survivor’s

Throughout the lives of the Human Race, there is one goal, survival. Some don’t succeed and some of us are lucky and do survive. One perfect example is Auschwitz. In this snake pit, the struggle for survival becomes so real for so many innocent people. It helps anyone who studies the Holocaust have a sense of how precious life. In the true book, Auschwitz: True Tales from a Grotesque Land by Sara Nomber-Przytyk, I will discuss two subjects the book, the terrible pains of Auschwitz, finding beauty in the worst of places, and I will also talk about why I personally chose this book to read.

To begin, S.Y. Agnon way of writing is rather strange in his story called “The lady and the Peddler”. Agnon makes story sounds like a fairy tale, by presenting a character named Hilni who is trying to suck on a peddler named Joseph’s blood which implies she is a vampire. Agnon gives the audience hints as to what happened to her ex-husband’s, building up the mood for the audience getting us eager and invested in the plot. When I first read the story, it was not hard to understand and was rather easy for me to get into it, as the hints and the actions Hilni took helped me understand why her character acted the way she did.

I could no longer see the lifeless people around me. It was as if they were eaten by the darkness once again. After walking for miles, my feet no longer felt like moving. My body begged me to stop but I knew I had to keep going in order to live. I knew death was creeping up on us all. For many of us, death, has already taken over (“The Death March from Auschwitz”). As we marched further and further, the never ending rain pelted us with bullets. Mud collected on our shoes as if the mud were the shoes themselves. The scent of the Earth arose from the ground as if it had come back from the dead. For once, I got a breath of fresh air. For once, I felt peaceful. I watched as the moonlight reflected off the puddles. Along with that, I saw the reflection of a person I no longer recognized. Her hair was no longer softly curled. Her smile no longer shined bright. Her emotions were no longer concealed. “Oh how time has been so cruel in that camp.” I whispered

Mrs. Rita Weiss, a Holocaust survivor, loose 48 members of her family in Auschwitz during the first week of June 1944, including her mother, father, and brother. She was the only one who survived. The day she arrived to the concentration camp she asked one of the guards: “Is it true that we will meet our parents and family on the weekend?” “Ha, ha, ha” the guard replies, “Who told you that? Parents? Family? Do you see those chimneys? Do you see the smoke? They are already in heaven.” (Yad Vashem)

We have all experienced darkness. We have all experienced unfair punishment. We have all experienced desperation. However, we cannot, even for a second, think that we can fully understand the experiences of the persecuted Jewish people during the Holocaust. Each prisoner had undergone sufferings personal to him or her. Due to the unfathomable torture that led to the desolation of the human spirit, most prisoners abandoned their morals to fight for survival. It is hard to measure when and under what circumstances this is “appropriate” or justifiable. I argue that the ruthless manifestation of evil validates the loss of self and therefore the loss of morality. For those that have survived the Holocaust, there are implications of the loss of humanity and face the test of readopting their humanity in order to assimilate into society once again.

In Element 1, I will present some cases where deception is thought to be lying, and other cases where deception is not thought to be lying. I will contend that, when deception is lying, it is immoral and I will give reasons for why this is the case. After my presentation, I will take a look at some possible criticisms of my arguments and then answer those criticisms. Then, I will present my conclusions.

​Throughout Viktor E. Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning mental, physical, and emotional torture and attack impressed on the prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camp was a regular and familiar topic. “The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor 's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk.” (Page #37) If I was compelled to experience an organization or group of authorities that I had no rights or privileges whatsoever, while enduring the harsh realities of nature’s weather, and facing weapons intended to take my life and the lives around me, I would most likely be in survival mode and be focused on trying to be as composed and camouflaged as possible. It is admirable how the prisoners in this recollection from Viktor are thinking of one another as well as themselves by assisting their fellow man in survival as well. I would like

The Man’s Search for Meaning demonstrates what a human being can endure in spite of terrible state of affairs such as the Holocaust. I believe Viktor Frankl survived this cruel occurrence because it is not only his psychiatrist background but his optimistic and meaning for life that also saved him. Frankl opposes that every individual has an inborn tendency to search for the meaning of his being, “You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you do and feel about what happens to you” (pages X Foreword). Frankl’s experiences in the several small concentration camps are used to demonstrate on how concentrating on the reasons behind a circumstance rather than the outcomes that follow, lets a person to endure even the most horrifying of situations. He writes of all the horrors and tragedies’ that he and his fellow prisoners experienced, however, the message that is most important is that no matter what type of suffering a person withstands, as long as they grasp onto their faith that everything happens for a reason, they can survive just about anything.