This is a review for the English translation of the collected works - I hope to reread this in Polish sometime in the future.

Concentration camp literature never gets any easier. This is impossible to give a star rating to. Did I enjoy it? That's definitely not the word I'd use. Was it gripping and harrowing? Absolutely. Did it horrify me? Also yes.

Borowski writes fictionalized (question mark) accounts of being a Pole in the most infamous concentration camp and having to do the "dirty" work. He describes the experience of being one of the many who lead others straight to their deaths, unload corpses from gas chambers into crematoriums, or unload crushed infant bodies from the trains that brought the infants. He describes hunger, dehumanization, desensitization, detachment, memories of the before times, the omnipresence of quick and drawn out deaths, festering wounds, and all the horrors that come with the above. And, most strikingly, he touches on human morality and why he and others complied rather than rebelled. Broken spirits abound.

I can't in good conscience recommend this book to anyone by saying "here's an enjoyable piece of literature". But I do recommend it if you are prepared to face the psychology of someone who survived the Nazi death camps. Five stars.