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). They have no faith in justice or morality as “in German cities the store windows are filled with books and religious objects, but the smoke from the crematoria still hovers above the forests…” (168). Additionally, they are uninterested in fixing the world and only want to survive without suffering any longer. The poet tells them a story about staying with a doctor friend during the January Offensive in 1945, when the Russians marched across German territory. In the hospital where the doctor works, a young pregnant Russian woman appeared, gave birth, and then strapped the baby to her back and rejoined the march after a day of rest. The friends are doubtful of this story, and the poet’s mistress asks whether it’s better to sacrifice one’s life for one’s ideals or to hide out and save oneself. Eventually, the poet and his two partners return to Poland with instructions to bring word to the four men’s families. Of their lost loved ones, one finds and buries his sister’s body and becomes an architect; one marries the girl he lost, who survived the war; and one joins the Polish army in Italy, learning that the girl whom he impregnated and lost survived and gave birth. The January Offensive saved both mother and child.