More Gas, Comrades! (Więcej gazu, Kameraden!)

Content and Interpretation The collection consists of fifteen stories about World War II and the Holocaust seen through the eyes of its perpetrators and accomplices. While an exact time and place are not given, most of the stories take place in Nazi-occupied Poland. Because it lacks a thoroughly prepared timeline, Piwowarski’s literary representations seem disconnected from history, and the author plays liberally with the relationship between fact and fiction. In the afterword The Imperative of Remembrance, Piwowarski described his literary agenda with regard to the commemoration of the Holocaust. It arises, he argues, from a need to fill the gaps in fiction, which is unable to sufficiently grasp the issue of the Holocaust. What is needed in particular is to develop a perspective that approaches this issue from the outside, without recourse to direct experience. These beliefs are connected to the writer’s concern about the general lack of knowledge concerning the Holocaust, and his ideas on how literature should be written in order for remembrance to continue (Piwowarski, 2012, pp. 267–269). In the opening storyWomen in the Meadow and I, a Nazi gives air to his erotic fantasies. Train conductors in A Misunderstanding mock Jews who are dying while being transported to camps: