In a brief life deeply and traumatically disrupted by two years in concentration camps as a political prisoner, Tadeusz Borowski (1922-1951) was tragically destined to become one of the most eloquent witnesses to the Holocaust in Poland. His recollections and stories, the most famous of which is This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, document in stark historical, literary, and personal terms the experience of the camps and its cost to humanity. The correspondence in this volume expands on the insights of Borowski's published work and extends to the less-documented aftermath of the Holocaust in postwar Poland and East Germany. The volume opens with Borowski's letter to his mother from Pawiak Prison the day after his arrest and closes with an unsigned telegram informing his parents of his suicide. This English edition also contains new material in the form of additional letters from the private collection of the family of Anatol Girs.Illustrated throughout with photographs and reproductions, the letters to and from family members, friends, and literary figures offer an indispensable picture of the world in the wake of the Nazis - and of the indelible stain that experience left upon the literature, politics, and life of Eastern Europe, in particular upon one gifted and doomed writer.

タデウシュ・ボロフスキの書簡集である本作は、アウシュヴィッツの地獄を潜り抜けた魂が、戦後の荒廃でいかに呻き、再生を試みたかを物語る生々しい人間記録です。代表作に見られる「冷徹なリアリズム」の深淵に、個人的な親愛や苦悩という血肉を通わせた言葉たちは、単なる記録を越え、壊滅した人間性の再構築という文学的な祈りに満ちています。 獄中からの便りに始まり、自死を告げる電報で幕を閉じる構成は、あまりに劇的で残酷です。歴史の目撃者という公的な顔と、一人の青年としての脆い内面が交錯する瞬間、読者は「生き残ること」の真の意味を突きつけられます。戦後東欧を駆け抜けた孤独な天才の、痛切なまでの生の叫びに、激しく魂を揺さぶられる一冊です。