What did you learn from this story that you did not previously know about life in Nazi concentration camps?
Prior to reading this text I had been informed of the tortuous ways of the Nazi concentration camps. I remember potentially in high being educated in high of the train carts and how packed the trains had been as well as the unsanitary conditions in these carts. What I wasn’t aware of was the fact that infants had been involved as well. As the people are being exited from the carts we can notice the dead infants along with the others along the train dead as well. I didn’t know that the heartlessness of the Nazi guards to go as far as a lack of care of infants. To have no care for new live seems a bit extreme. Could you even imagine new life instantly being thrown into a gas chamber only to live for so shortly. Any life presented upon in that train was not safe. No matter who came out of that train it seems your life was instantly on the line and survival is unlikely.
A tall, grey-haired woman who has just arrived on the “transport” whispers, “My poor boy,” to our narrator. What does she mean?
The tall grey haired woman understands the narrators circumstances. The narrator had been a political prisoner doing simply what he is told to. The narrator goes through gruesome scenes coming across dead bodies as well as those soon to be exposed to the gas chambers. If the narrator wants any chance of survival he must do as he is told or he’ll end up like those he comes across in the camp. The woman feels for him and likely feels for the rest of the prisoners as a they are all living through a horrific time period. He could be feeling sorry for her as well as he knows her time could be coming to an end as well.
Explain the significance of the story’s title. “This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentleman.” What seems strange about it?
This way to gas is obviously discussing the narrator talking about those coming off the transport or at the camp inevitably be led to theirs death. They are lead to the gas chambers where their lives are instantly taken from them. What comes off as strange about the title is it seems uplifting in kind of a sarcastic way. Obviously the narrator deals with millions of emotions seeing people die left and right so their may be times he doesn’t really know how to deal with them. Saying this way to the gas ladies and gentlemen made me think they are being led to maybe somewhere a little more promising.
Shawn, Thanks for these reflections. Two thoughts – first, in your second response, you suggest that maybe the narrator feels the same compassion for the gray haired woman that she feels for him. However, immediately after that encounter, he has the conversation with Henri in which he says that he is glad that the Jews are being murdered. This means that, even if he does feel an impulse toward sympathy when he encounters the woman, he quickly suppresses it. Second, in thinking about the title, I would just point out that the language of the title comes not from the narrator’s voice, but the voice of an SS officer. If you look closely at the text, you will find a place where an SS officer addresses the people who are being sent to the gas chambers as “ladies and gentlemen.” This is the part of the text where the title comes from.