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

•  In the example I have chosen to share, the narrator is describing the process of unloading the incoming prisoners and cleaning out the cattle cars that brought them there. Borowski goes into great detail concerning the horrors that these innocent people faced upon entering the Concentration Camp, but one aspect of these events immediately stood out upon reading this portion of the story. There was a young girl with one leg that was being carried by the SS guards not to the camp or gas chambers, but straight to the crematorium. As is written in the book, “Several other men are carrying a small girl with only one leg. They hold her by the arms and the one leg. Tears are running down her face and she whispers faintly: “Sir, it hurts, it hurts . . . ” They throw her on the truck on top of the corpses. She will burn alive along with them (12).” Instead of giving this disabled girl the slightest bit of compassion or even having the decency of treating her like everyone else, she gets singled out and subjected to the cruelest punishment of them all. 
•  Of all the terrible things described throughout the course of the book, this stuck with me the most because I could not get this horrible image out of my head. How could people treat another human being with such savagery? At least the other prisoners thought they had a chance of survival, but this disabled girl is simply tossed on top of the already burned corpses as If she was a piece of garbage. While those that were gassed died quickly and painlessly, this person was forced to suffer an unimaginable amount of suffering. Instead of granting this less able girl pity or mercy, the Nazis decided to drag out her inevitable death.
• This example is cited early on in the story and shows just how terrible humans were treated when they were transported to the Concentration Camps.  If I were to see someone with a missing limb, it would be natural to feel bad and express sympathy towards their plight. However, the Nazis sought to subject this poor girl to even worse treatment than her fellow prisoners. They could not let her die in peace like everyone else? They had to make her ride along other corpses and get burned alive? The fact that something like this occurred proved to me that the Nazis were simply looking to make the incoming prisoners experience as much pain and suffering as possible.
•  Were the SS guards victims of the Nazis forced into work as many of them claim?  Or did they receive pleasure in doling out the maximum amount of human suffering that they possibly could?