This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen - Tadeusz Borowski

“Between two throw-ins in a soccer game, right behind my back, three thousand people had been put to death” There are many haunting words in Tadeusz Borowski set of short stories which provide a personal account of his life in a Nazi (I cannot call them German as such places do not represent the German people I have ever met) concentration camp however the quotation at the top of this review for me was one of the most horrific purely because the day before I had sat in the Stade de France watching my team lose the Champions League Final and to be honest I felt pretty down so everything was bought into sharp context as I sat in the beautiful Jardin Du ...  Read the complete review

This is a collection of 12 stories, set in a concentration camp; which in my opinion constitutes one of the most relevant and consistent - artistically and philosophically - accounts of the Nazi extermination machine. I have decided not to summarise or describe any of the stories or settings, but it is all there - the wire, the guards, the lice, the disease; beatings, starvation, slave labour, gas chambers and ovens; and the deaths, deaths, deaths, and more deaths; of thousands, of millions, happening behind the characters' backs, in front of their eyes, between one corner shot and another during the football match played by the ones who have been spared for now. This is ...  Read the complete review