h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It’s been called a classic of world literature, but even I would have to admit that there are more important things in the world than literature, and so the accolade falls a little flat. It should be required reading for everyone who cares about the future of the world -- or its recent history -- whether or not they have the slightest interest in literature.

In “This way for the gas, ladies and gentlemen,” Tadeusz Borowski, a former inmate of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, tells his own story. He tells of the horrors perpetrated by SS men apparently devoid of any inkling of remorse, and too, he tells of the depths that he himself sank to in order to survive -- his stint unloading a ‘transport’ from the ghetto of Sosnowiec-Bedzin, for example, or the revenge he meted out when a fellow prisoner stole from him two bars of Warsaw soap. His portrayal of Vorarbeiter Tadek -- that is, himself -- is saturated with disgust.

The last stories in the collection describe Borowski’s experiences immediately after the war. The world could never be the same for him after his ordeal, and, though his political journalism made him a celebrity, he soon committed suicide.