Durchfall, Auschwitz’s Unwritten Story: Filth and Excremental Violence in Tadeusz Borowski’s Postwar Fiction

Abstract

Abstract As an author central to postwar literature on the concentration and death camp experience, Tadeusz Borowski chose to depict the relatively taboo subject of excremental violence. Borowski’s documentary fiction depicted an aspect of history that was, especially in 1946 after his own incarceration and survival, both raw and controversial. Writing in Polish as part of a collective work, Borowski was intent on speaking in his native language to a shattered Polish nation. This article analyzes how Borowski drew attention to human rights violations by writing about excremental violence. It further examines how Borowski eschewed oversimplified postwar categories of perpetrators, victims, and resisters. Instead, drawing upon his own experiences in Auschwitz, Dautmergen, and Dachau, his works articulate the powerlessness of those in the camps and the dehumanizing conditions they faced, thus challenging any misleading narratives regarding heroic agency.