Editing Tadeusz Borowski (section)

==After the war==
He spent some time in [[Paris]], and then returned to Poland on 31 May 1946. His fiancée, who had survived the camps and emigrated to [[Sweden]], returned to Poland in late 1946, and they were married in December 1946.<ref name=intro/>

Borowski turned to prose after the war, believing that what he had to say could no longer be expressed in verse. His series of short stories about life in Auschwitz was published as ''Pożegnanie z Marią'' (''Farewell to Maria'', English title ''[[This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen]]''). The main stories are written in the first person from the perspective of an Auschwitz inmate; they describe the morally numbing effect of everyday terror, with prisoners, trying to survive, often being indifferent or mean towards each other; the privileges of non-Jewish inmates like Borowski; and the absence of any heroism. Early on after its publication in Poland, the work was accused of being nihilistic, amoral and decadent.<ref name=intro/> His short story cycle ''World of Stone'' describes his time in displaced person camps in Germany.

Borowski's short story ''Silence'' was written in the aftermath of the [[Dachau liberation reprisals|liberation of Dachau]]. The story is set in the newly liberated concentration camp and opens with imagery depicting a disgraced SS officer being dragged into an alley by a mob of prisoners who try to tear him apart with their bare hands. They return to the barracks and the scene is one of communal food preparation, prisoners noisily grinding [[grain]], slicing meat, mixing [[pancake]] batter and peeling potatoes in the narrow paths that wind between their bunk beds. They are playing cards and drinking hot soup when an American officer arrives. While expressing sympathy for the prisoners seeking vengeance against their captors, he urges restraint, and promises punishment under law. Some prisoners begin to debate where to kill the American officer, but the crowd begins to applaud the officer's promise of justice. When the American officer leaves the camp the prisoners return to the SS officer from the opening scene and trample him to death.<ref name=tad />

The Polish government considered the poem "amoral"<ref name=tad /> but Borowski found work as a journalist. He joined the Soviet-controlled [[Polish Workers' Party]] in 1948 and wrote political tracts as well. At first he believed that Communism was the only political force truly capable of preventing any future Auschwitz from happening. In 1950 he received the National Literary Prize, Second Degree.

In the summer of 1949 he was sent to work in the Press Section of the Polish Military Mission in [[Berlin]]. He returned to Warsaw a year later and entered into an extramarital affair.<ref name=intro/>

Soon after a close friend of his (the same friend who had earlier been imprisoned by the Gestapo, and in whose apartment both Borowski and his fiancée had been arrested)<ref name=intro/> was imprisoned and tortured by the Communists. Borowski tried to intervene on his behalf and failed; he became completely disillusioned with the socialist regime.<ref name=tad />