Tadeusz Borowski (Polish pronunciation: [taˈdɛ.uʐ bɔˈrɔfskʲi]; 12 November 1922 – 3 July 1951) was a Polish writer and journalist. He wrote poetry and stories about his time as a prisoner in Auschwitz. These works are considered important pieces of Polish literature.

Early life

Borowski was born in 1922 in Zhytomyr, which is now part of Ukraine. In 1926, his father, whose bookstore had been taken over by the government, was sent to a camp in the Gulag system in Russian Karelia because he had served in a Polish military group during World War I. In 1930, Borowski's mother was sent away to a settlement along the Yenisei River in Siberia during a government program that forced people to share land and resources. During this time, Tadeusz lived with his aunt.

Borowski and his family were targeted by the Soviet Union during Stalin's Great Terror because they were Poles. In 1932, the Borowskis were sent away to Poland by the Polish Red Cross in an exchange for Communist prisoners. Without much money, the family settled in Warsaw.

Experiences under Nazi occupation

During Nazi rule in Poland, many Poles were not allowed to go to university or even high school. In 1940, Borowski completed his high school education in a secret school in Nazi-occupied Poland. He graduated that year while Jewish people were being taken away by the Nazis. He then began studying Polish literature in secret at Warsaw University. His classes met in private homes. While studying, he met Maria Rundo, who became his lifelong partner.

He also worked with a group called Droga, which published articles. His book of poems, Wherever the Earth (1942), was shared secretly. Scholars today say the poems show a view of the world as a place where people are forced to work hard.

As part of a secret education group in Warsaw, Borowski lived with Maria. In February 1943, Maria did not return home one night. Borowski thought she might have been arrested. Instead of avoiding places they usually met, he went directly to the apartment of a friend, where Nazi agents were waiting. At 21 years old, Borowski was sent to Pawiak prison for two months before being sent to Auschwitz in April 1943.

At Auschwitz, Borowski was forced to work in very harsh conditions. Later, he wrote about this experience. He worked on a railway ramp where arriving Jewish people were told to leave their belongings and then sent directly to gas chambers. While in Auschwitz, Borowski got pneumonia and was later forced to work in a Nazi medical experiment "hospital." He stayed in contact with his fiancée, who was also imprisoned in Auschwitz.

In late 1944, Borowski was moved from Auschwitz to a smaller camp called Dautmergen, which was part of Natzweiler-Struthof, and then to Dachau. Dachau-Allach was freed by American soldiers on May 1, 1945. After that, Borowski lived in a camp for people displaced by the war near Munich.

After the war

He spent time in Paris and returned to Poland on May 31, 1946. His fiancée, who had survived the camps and moved to Sweden, returned to Poland in late 1946. They married in December 1946.

After the war, Borowski wrote prose instead of poetry because he believed his experiences could no longer be expressed in verse. He wrote a series of short stories about life in Auschwitz, which were published as Pożegnanie z Marią (Farewell to Maria, also known as This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen in English). The stories are told from the viewpoint of an Auschwitz prisoner. They describe how the constant fear and suffering made people lose their sense of morality, how prisoners often ignored or hurt each other to survive, the special treatment given to non-Jewish prisoners like Borowski, and how no one acted as a hero. When the book was first published in Poland, some people criticized it as having no moral values, being cruel, or being overly pessimistic. His other work, World of Stone, describes his time in displaced person camps in Germany.

Borowski wrote the short story Silence after the liberation of Dachau. The story begins with a scene of prisoners dragging a disgraced SS officer into an alley and trying to kill him. Later, the prisoners prepare food together in their barracks, grinding grain, slicing meat, and making pancakes. They play cards and drink soup when an American officer arrives. The officer expresses sympathy for the prisoners’ anger toward their former captors but urges them to follow the law instead of taking revenge. Some prisoners debate whether to kill the officer, but most support the officer’s promise of justice. When the officer leaves, the prisoners return to the SS officer and kill him by trampling him.

The Polish government called Silence “amoral,” but Borowski found work as a journalist. In 1948, he joined the Soviet-controlled Polish Workers’ Party and wrote political articles. At first, he believed Communism was the only political system that could stop another Auschwitz from happening. In 1950, he received Poland’s National Literary Prize, Second Degree.

In the summer of 1949, Borowski was sent to work in the Press Section of the Polish Military Mission in Berlin. He returned to Warsaw a year later and had an affair outside of his marriage.

Soon after, a close friend of Borowski’s (the same friend who had been imprisoned by the Gestapo and in whose apartment Borowski and his fiancée had been arrested) was imprisoned and tortured by the Communists. Borowski tried to help his friend but failed. This experience made him lose all trust in the socialist government.

Death

On July 3, 1951, at the age of 28, Borowski died by suicide after breathing in gas from a gas stove. His wife had given birth to their daughter, Małgorzata Borowska, a few days before his death.

On July 6, 1951, Borowski was buried in the military section of Powązki National Cemetery in Warsaw. The song "The Internationale" was played during the ceremony. He was given the highest honors after his death. An obituary notice in the newspaper Nowa Kultura was signed by 86 writers. Soon after, a special issue of this newspaper was published with writings from many important Polish authors. Since then, many books, poems, and articles about Borowski have been published in different languages and editions. Holocaust survivor Arnold Lustiger wrote about this in Die Welt. The book This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen is now part of the Penguin Classics series, showing Borowski’s importance in literature.

Legacy

His books are considered classics of Polish post-war literature and had a big influence in Central European society.

• Tadeusz Borowski is discussed in the "Beta" section of Czesław Miłosz's book, The Captive Mind.
• His friend Tadeusz Drewnowski wrote several books about Borowski, including the 1962 biography Ucieczka z kamiennego świata (Escape from the World of Stone) and Postal Indiscretions: The Correspondence of Tadeusz Borowski.
• The 1970 Polish film Landscape After the Battle is based on Borowski's writings.
• The 1984 Style Council song "Ghosts of Dachau" was inspired by This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen.
• Borowski's books are mentioned in the award-winning 1995 novel The Reader (Der Vorleser) by German author Bernhard Schlink, in which a former concentration camp guard commits suicide in remorse after reading Borowski's and other survivors' memoirs.
• In 2002, Imre Kertész, while receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature, said that his own books were written because he was very interested in Borowski's writing style.

Bibliography in English

• This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen (Proszę państwa do gazu), Penguin Books, London, 1992. 192 pages, hardcover. ISBN 0-14-018624-7.
• We Were in Auschwitz (Byliśmy w Oświęcimiu), Natl Book Network, 2000. 212 pages, hardcover. ISBN 1-56649-123-1.
• Postal indiscretions: the correspondence of Tadeusz Borowski (Niedyskrecje pocztowe: korespondencja Tadeusza Borowskiego), Northwestern University Press, 2007. ISBN 0-8101-2203-0.
• Tadeusz Borowski: Selected Poems, hit & run press, California, 1990. 117 pages, bilingual, hardcover and paperback. Translated by Tadeusz Pioro, Larry Rafferty, and Meryl Natchez, with an introduction by Stanisław Barańczak.
• Here in Our Auschwitz and Other Stories (Yale University Press, 2021). Trans. Madeline G. Levine.