6. This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski

This collection of short stories was originally titled Farewell to Maria, a seemingly strange title for a Holocaust book until you learn Borowski’s history: His girlfriend, Maria, was captured and sent to a concentration camp, and his love for her was so extreme that he was arrested in an attempt to follow her to the same camp; he was, however, sent to Auschwitz instead. He survived and lived to write This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, a surprisingly satirical collection of what life is like in a Nazi concentration camp.