This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

A man is trying to escape as a group of inmates capture him in the barracks and start “tearing at him with greedy hands” (161). In the quiet, there is a warning that passes between the inmates about soldiers marching through the camp and they disperse, going about their evening ritual of preparing food. An American soldier enters and, through a translator, promises that those who were responsible for their suffering would be punished but asks the prisoners not to enact their own justice. Though some of the inmates are initially skeptical, they all cheer. The American visits each barrack to make the same speech before finally leaving the camp. Then, Tadek and the rest of the inmates uncover the man who they have hidden, gagged and covered with blankets and bodies. They drag him out of the bunk and trample him until he is dead.