Time Period and Cultural Context

for “Silence” by Tadeusz Borowski

Presentation by: Carson Gaddis
Culture in the 1940’s in Germany
• During the Second World War, many groups of people were stripped of
their basic rights of living.
• Hitler had an ideology that the society should look and be the way that he
wanted it to be, Aryan, or a “pure German race”. He wanted to be the
supreme ruler and for everyone to follow his way of life.
• With that, he decided to detain every Jew and all the people that he
deemed unfit such as those with mental issues and even those who he
thought were smarter than him.
• He became an abusive dictator and ordered the suffering and murder of
those who got in his way.
Number of Deaths in World War II:
• https://youtu.be/7cgRwDkP6vk
Daily life in Germany
• Every adult went to work, children went to school until it was unsafe
for Jewish people to own their own businesses or even walk down the
street.
• Neighbors began to disappear in the night, businesses were
rampaged, and street life became more and more empty throughout
the days.
• Many people tried to escape the country or hide. Everyone lived in a
constant state of fear.
 Tadeusz Borowski (Nov. 12, 1922- July 3, 1951)
• Borowski, a 21 year old Polish man, was arrested in
1943 and taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp
and later taken to a Dachau camp.
• He remained orderly in this time and obeyed all the
officers at the camps in order to keep his life.
• When the Dachau camp was first opened in 1933, it
imprisoned political criminals and then eventually
artists, homosexuals, the mentally and physically ill,
and intellectuals which Hitler deemed radically unfit.
• Borowski was one of the artists (a poet) that was
considered unfit.
Dachau Concentration Camp
• Camp detainees were immediately exposed to abusive treatment.
• They were malnourished, beaten, and killed.
• Prisoners deemed guilty of breaking the law were brutally beaten and
those who tried to escape were executed on spot.
• In 1942, the construction of four crematoriums began. This was
Hitler’s “Final Solution” to eradicate the remaining Jewish population.
Liberation of the Dachau Concentration camp:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxZaVjuy4ng
Culture of World War II in Relation to Class
• Throughout the readings in this class, we have had multiple selections
about power and those who are abused by that power.
• In ”Silence,” Tadeusz mentions the beating of a German officer during their
liberation by the Americans. Throughout the cruelty all these prisoners had
endured, this seemed like they finally had some power over these officers.
• These Nazi officers had taken their position and put themselves above the
rest of the population like those with no rank were beneath them.
• Through the years, Germans had lived in a dictatorship, but never to the
extent of being treated as inhumane.
• Those in power tend to abuse that power any way they can and that has
been proven through thousands of different, real stories, in multiple
countries throughout the entire history of the world.
 Sources
• https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/the-holocaust
• https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/dachau
• https://culture.pl/en/artist/tadeusz-borowski
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tadeusz-Borowski
• https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjeoqqwhrblAhUHVK0KHS9sBi4Q
jRx6BAgBEAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Falchetron.com%2FTadeusz-
Borowski&psig=AOvVaw2QZpLtDhvFOKGY5gSSesqT&ust=1572046137733521