[citation needed] Borowski was born in 1922 into the Polish community in Zhytomyr, Ukrainian SSR (today Ukraine).

[1] In 1926, his father, whose bookstore had been nationalized by the communists, was sent to a camp in the Gulag system in Russian Karelia because he had been a member of a Polish military organization during World War I.

The poems have been described by modern scholars as "remarkable for their dark view of the earth as an enormous labor camp".

Rather than staying away from any of their usual meeting places, though, he walked straight into the trap that was set by the Gestapo agents in the apartment of his and Maria's close friend.

In particular, working on a railway ramp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, he witnessed arriving Jews being told to leave their personal property behind, and then being transferred directly from the trains to the gas chambers.

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 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.

[2] "On 6 July 1951, the openly anti-militarist Borowski was buried, of all places, in the military section of Powązki National Cemetery in Warsaw to the strains of 'The Internationale', and was posthumously awarded the highest honours.

Since then, countless texts, poems and articles by and about Borowski have been published, as well as many books in various languages and editions," writes Holocaust survivor Arnold Lustiger in Die Welt.

The book "This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen" is now also published as part of 'Penguin Classics', further cementing Borowski's place amongst literary greats.