“This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen” – Hailey Egan

5.) When the narrator asks “Are we good people?”, he seems to be frustrated over the fact that he can’t do anything about what’s happening but sit by and listen to the orders of the Nazis. Even though he wasn’t the one personally torturing these people, he felt a sense of guilt. He is forced to make women take dead babies that aren’t even their own. Most of the people in the camps were forced to act a certain way in order to protect themselves. Seeing everything that human beings are capable of and the fact that he isn’t able to make any changes makes him question this. Unfortunately, in order for him to survive he has to do what the Nazis tell him so he is having a moral conflict with himself. He isn’t at the camp for being Jewish and at first he claims he feels no pity, but his feelings change and he begins to question whether protecting himself is really what’s important. He continues to protect himself in the end and was liberated by the Americans, but it most definitely changed him as a person because of the things he had seen and was forced to do.

6.) Before I even began reading these stories, I had an inkling that this work would take place around time of The Holocaust and that the “Gas” in the title is actually a reference to gas chambers. The title is significant for it’s hypocrisy. It seems to be said in an inviting tone, or as if something exciting is going to happen that you want to be apart of. “This way to….” makes me think that someone is guiding people to a show of some sort. I think the author purposely did this because it emphasized on the fact that these inhumane acts were normalized because Nazis didn’t see these people as human beings. I think the title is a perfect expression of that without directly coming out and saying it. These prisoners who were taken away from their families and put in these camps were being lead to their death, and the title downplays what exactly these people are going to face or where they’re being led.