SOURCE: Introduction to This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, Penguin, 1976, pp. 11-26.

In the following introductory essay, Kott discusses This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen in terms of Borowski's experiences in Poland and in Auschwitz.

Tadeusz Borowski opened a gas valve on July 1, 1951. He was not yet thirty. Borowski's suicide was a shock that one can compare only to the suicide, twenty-one years before, of Vladimir Mayakowski. Borowski was the greatest hope of Polish literature among the generation of his contemporaries decimated by the war. He was also the greatest hope of the Communist party, as well as its apostle and inquisitor; many years had to pass before many of us realized that he was also its martyr. The five-volume posthumous edition of his collected works contains poetry, journalistic writings, news articles, novels, and short stories; among the latter are at least a hundred...