For Poland it was a return to the bad old days of rule by fear. For Janusz Palusinski, then sixteen years old, it meant a return to the bad old days of permanent hunger.
The Nazis had set the Polish farmers working for the sustenance of the German people, each district commander ensuring that no produce was withheld, only the most meager amount left for the farmer and his family so that they had the strength to work the fields. To hide food from the occupying forces meant punishment by death.
The people of Janusz's village, both men and women, young and old, were decimated during the terrible years that followed, for the Polish people are a proud and defiant race and the village was no more, and certainly no less, than an encapsulation of the country as a whole. Many of the younger men became partisans, hiding in the surrounding forests by day, venturing forth to sabotage where they could by night.
Henryk Palusinski saw this as a time to redeem his former glory. Age and his old wound prevented any active part in resistance operations, but he endeavored to supply the hiding groups with what little food he and the other villagers could spare. He also fed them any information on German troop activities that came his way. He urged his son to join the partisans many times, but Janusz was even more reluctant to do that than he was to plow the field, and Kazimiera, when her son complained to her, forbade Henryk to persist with such suggestions. The risk in providing food for the cause was enough, she scolded, without exposing their one and only son to more danger than already existed for them all. Besides, who would work the farm if anything happened to the boy? Although disappointed in his son's lack of spirit, Henryk was forced to listen to reason.
Events took their own course when the older Palusinski fell ill in the winter months with a severe respiratory condition. In the early hours of one morning when he lay wheezing in his sickbed, there came an urgent rapping on the front door. Kazimiera feared it was German soldiers making a spot check on the farms around the village, a frequent occurrence in those dark days, searching for hidden food stores, perhaps hoping they might discover a partisan or two skulking on the premises. She opened the door with much trepidation, and it was with relief that Kazimiera recognized the woman standing outside, hair dampened by drizzling rain: she was from the village, her husband a member of the resistance. The woman held a small bundle in her arms.
"Food, pani Palusinska," she told Kazimiera, "for my husband. The Germans watch me, they suspect my Mikofaj is with the resistance. But our men are starving in the forest. Pan Palusinski must take this to them." Kazimiera explained that Henryk was too ill for such a journey. "You have a strong son," she was reminded, the woman's tone cold.
Henryk had heard the conversation through the open door of his room and he called out for his wife to bring the woman inside lest by chance she were seen by their enemy. The villager rushed to Henryk's door and pleaded with him to send Janusz into the forest with the food. The older Palusinski began to rise, prepared to undertake the mission himself despite his poor health, and Kazimiera pushed him back again, agreeing that their son should go, afraid that such an effort would surely kill her husband.
Janusz had no other choice. If he refused he would be pilloried by the villagers and neighbors, branded a coward, and his own father would make his life even more unbearable for him than it was already. Besides, the risk should be minimal at that hour of the morning.
His father gave him detailed instructions on where to find the partisans' forest hideaway, and the youth set out, pulling his coat tight around his neck against the chill rain. It was one of those few occasions when Henryk Palusinski felt truly proud of his son. Unfortunately that pride was to be shortlived.
Janusz was captured in the forest by German soldiers who had always been aware that there was a supply line between the partisans and the villagers and fanners. As fate would have it—and as perversely ironic as fate often is—a patrol had chosen that morning to watch a particular section of woodland in which the young Palusinski crept. He was caught within ten minutes of leaving his home.
To his credit, Janusz did not instantly break under the Nazi threats and beatings that followed. However, it took less than a day at the dreaded Lublin interrogation center for that to happen.
He gave the names of partisans, revealed where their encampment in the forest was hidden, mentioned which villages assisted them (much of this was guesswork on his part and he strove to make it sound convincing to his tormentors), and who among the farmers supplied the underground movement with food. It was not until they took him to another room and completely immersed his body in water, pulling him up just before he lost consciousness, repeating the process several times, that he admitted his own parents were involved with the partisans. Only when lighted cigarettes were pressed against his testicles and no more information babbled from his broken lips was the Gestapo sure there was nothing left for him to tell.
The next day Janusz was driven to Zamek Lublin, a hillside castle that served as both prison and courthouse. There, in an old chapel that had been transformed into a courtroom, the dazed youth was sentenced to imprisonment. He was lucky: others with him found guilty were dispatched to a room next door and instantly shot.
From Zamek Lublin he was taken to Majdanek, a notorious internment center just east of the city where many thousands of Poles, Hungarians, and Czechoslovaks were being held, and it was here that Janusz received the tattooed number on his wrist that forever would identify him as the unfortunate victim of a Nazi concentration camp.
Once he had recovered from his injuries, he began to realize he had certain advantages over many of the other inmates that might possibly help him survive: he was young and had learned to exist on a limited amount of food for a number of years (on this point he was soon to discover that at Majdanek "limited" meant hardly any at all); he was cunning, already a natural scrounger; he held scant remorse for any personal misdeeds (the thought of what had befallen those he had betrayed —including the fate of his parents—hardly disturbed him); he was not Jewish.
And there was one particular aberration of character that would eventually ensure his survival under the worst of circumstances, but that was not to be appreciated until much later.
His clothes were of a black-and-white striped material, thin and coarse and loose-fitting; his bed was a plank of wood on damp ground. His companions were the starving.
Janusz became used to raving hunger once more. He dreamed of great plates of sauerkraut, sausages, boiled pork and pickles with coriander seeds mixed in. And often he dreamed of when he was nine years old, of the night his father had stolen the tiny pig, how his family had feasted, the pork lasting for days, thin soup made from the bones lasting even longer. He would wake from the dream in the darkness of the night, his sunken eyes wide and staring, the succulent memory vanquishing the moans and smells around him in the rough hut. He would remember other details of that clandestine night, and juices would run from his open mouth.
Time passed and Janusz mentally sank into himself just as his flesh physically sank into his bones. Yet there was ever one bright, although tormenting, light for him. Unlike many of his fellow internees for whom food had become almost an abstract thing—they still craved it, still licked their bowls that had often contained only watery, meatless soup, a piece of black bread, and sawdust; but the less they were fed, the more unreal to them became true sustenance—he never relinquished that one glorious memory of his family's night feast all those years ago. It became an obsession with him. And oddly, a driving force. Where others slowly drifted down into their own private abysses of despair, Janusz's thoughts constantly stretched toward his vision, perhaps as a drowning man might reach for a swooping seagull.
He worked as hard for his jailers as his enfeebled body would allow (and with considerably more eagerness than on his father's farm) and was never averse to mentioning any subversive talk he might hear in the barrack huts during the night, always willing to point out potential troublemakers to the German guards. He became
a pariah among the prisoners for, although they could only guess he was an informer, it was for his readiness to serve the Third Reich beasts that he was hated. Fortunately for him, there was too much dread in their hearts and too much passion sapped from their souls for them to take vengeance.
Then one day, Janusz and two dozen or so others were marched from the camp to a hillside that was used for mass executions. They were instructed to wait beside several open pits.
The number of Unerwünschte—"undesirables," as the Nazis referred to Jews—was too many to count (years after the nightmare Janusz could not remember if there had been hundreds or if there had been thousands), as they were lined up before the pits in groups. There they were machine-gunned, most of the bodies toppling into the open graves. It was the task of the working party to throw in those who had fallen the wrong way, then arrange the bodies so that the next batch could be heaped in on top. When the pile reached a certain level, they were to cover the pit with lime and soil. Before that was done though, there was a special job to perform for a chosen few. Janusz was one of the chosen.
An SS captain provided Janusz and three companions with pliers and short, blunted knives; their orders were to pull any gold teeth they could find among the corpses and to cut off any rings that had not already been confiscated.
This was no shock for Janusz because his mind had long since decided to protect him from such traumas. He crawled among the still warm corpses, giving them no more regard than if they were freshly slaughtered livestock. Dead meat. That's all this great tumble of arms and legs was. White carcasses. Some still pink-colored. Like the little pig . . .
No one was watching as he lifted the hand of the plump woman, the flesh of her finger swollen over the rim of her gold ring. The Gestapo had been merciful: they hadn't cut the jewelry from her while she was still alive. He sawed at the finger. No one was paying any attention. He slid the ring off. And drew meat from the fingerbone with his teeth. He swallowed. The woman's eyes opened. She looked at him, and he fought to keep the bloodied morsel down. It lodged in his throat as life went from the woman's eyes. He swallowed again, once, twice. The meat was accepted.
That was the real beginning of Janusz Palusinski's survival. He had found a food supply. He was filled neither with joy nor shame, merely relief that he had a means to exist.
Exist he did, even though he was violently ill for days after that first eating of human flesh; his stomach was not accustomed to such richness. He was lucky to recover, for his general weakness might have allowed permanent damage. But Janusz was resilient, if nothing else. From then on he was more cautious about how much he cut from the piled corpses, often concealing small segments in his loose clothing to be consumed late at night beneath his thin blanket. The amount he was able to eat was never enough to have any marked effect on his physique, and that was fortunate, for such a change would have been easily noticed amid the walking skeletons of the Majdanek concentration camp. But it was sufficient to strengthen him and thus renew his desire to survive.
Disaster, for him, came months later when for no apparent reason he was taken off the burial detail. Perhaps the German soldiers themselves had grown sick of his eagerness to crawl among the dead, or perhaps they felt he had become too privileged. Whatever the reason, Janusz's specialist services were no longer required. His condition deteriorated rapidly with no regular sustenance.
He became as the others of the camp, a shuffling corpse, eyes enlarged as his skin shriveled, his bones jutting with deep hollows between. He began to have fits of coughing that drained him of any strength he had left, and blood spots speckled his palm when he took his hand away from his mouth. Delirium soon followed. Finally he was moved to a hut where those who were dying were left without food or care, their passing hastened by lack of both.
He had no idea of how long he had lain there; it could have been days, it might only have been hours. But something had drawn his senses toward one focal point. It was a smell. Familiar. From the past. He stared into the grayness above and his tongue ran across dry, cracked lips, failing to moisten them. He drew up his knees as hunger cramped his stomach, and his head lolled listlessly when the pain passed. That faint smell, what was it? So familiar. He was a boy again, and he stood in the center of the room watching a door. Mamusia and Tatus had shut him out. They always did when they did things to each other, unless they thought he was sleeping. He could hear them laughing, and then he could hear them moaning as if they were hurting each other. But one night, when they thought he was asleep, he had watched them across the bedroom . . . and hadn't liked what he saw . . . but had wanted to be part of it . . . to enjoy the game with them, to be hurt in the same way . . . but he knew it was forbidden . . . The faint smell. The boy looked toward the table, toward the source. The meat was dark red, blood seeping onto the rough wooden surface. He moved closer.
Janusz recognized the odor of raw liver. But it wasn't possible. He was no longer a child and this place was not his home. No, this was the death hut. The smell though. It was here. There was raw liver somewhere nearby. His smile made his lips bleed.
For the first time he heard the dull moans, and they were around him, not from behind a closed door. And the smell was with the moans.
He let his head fall to one side, and in the predawn light saw the shapeless bundle next to him. There was hardly anything left of the man, and he barely moved. But the smell was from him and it was mouthwatering. Janusz's arm trembled when he reached toward the figure.
The man was not sleeping, nor was he really conscious. He was near death, and that proximity was comforting for him. Most of the pain had gone to some distant point, so far away it could scarcely be felt. He sunk further within himself and realized that the journey inward was the way to final peace. Yet something was moving him, interrupting his floating descent. Something was caressing his stomach. Pain was coming close once more, and the man did not want that. He tried to protest, but a murmur that was only a sigh was all the sound he managed. Sharp agony now. And something hard covering his mouth and nose, stopping any more sighs, any more breathing. The agony increased as something gnawed into his belly, and he was too feeble to protest further. But the pain was becoming dulled, bliss was washing through him, for his senses were leaving and he, at long last, was leaving with them and it was good, so ultimately good.
No one went near the hut that day, nor the next. No corpses were taken away, no more of the dying were dumped inside. It was to be five days before the door of the Majdanek death hut was opened again, and then by Russian soldiers, for this was the summer of 1944 and the German invaders were being driven from Poland.
The Russians, already hardened by their own suffering in the terrible war and by the atrocities they had witnessed during the march across their neighboring country, were sickened by what they found inside the hut. Only one man was still alive and he, understandably, was demented by what had happened around him. He lay on a floor that was filled with corpses. Many had been mutilated, for it seemed rats had found their way inside and fed off his dead and dying compatriots.
Unfortunately for the Polish people, once the Russians had occupied their country they felt no compunction to leave. Poland came under Communist control, and oppression, although never as severe as under Nazi rule, remained the norm. Again farmers and factory workers found themselves working for the State rather than for themselves, with the government dictating at what rates produce should be sold.
Janusz Palusinski, who bore the indelible mark of German brutality on his wrist and never failed to let the tattoo show on liny occasion that sympathy might help better his cause, came to thrive under the system, for scrounging and self-interest was the ideal apprenticeship for a black marketeer. It took him u full year to recover from his treatment by the Nazis (although a whole lifetime would never erase the damage to his psyche) but his will to survive at all costs had been enhanced rather than depleted. He did not return to his father's farm for two reasons: he was not sure of th
e reception he would get from the villagers who must have known that it was he who had betrayed the partisans and those who helped them; and he had no desire to become a farmer once more. During the year of recuperation, most of which took place in a small hospital just outside Lukow, he read through the published crimes of the Nazi regime, always searching for mention of his own village, and one day he came across what he had been looking for. Listed were the names of locals and villagers who had been shot for giving aid to the underground movement. A hundred and thirty-two people were on the list, his parents among them. Even now, when concern for his own well-being was no longer acute, he felt no remorse, not even for the fate of his own mother. Such emotion, never strong within him anyway, had been entirely eradicated over the last few years.
As time passed, life began to flourish for Janusz, who took to the illegal trade he dealt in as if born to it. He supplied goods-hungry farmers and food-hungry manufacturers with what they desired, trade between the two factions being lucrative for the middleman. But he always operated in a small way in those early years, never wishing to rise in fortune so much that he became visible to the authorities.
Janusz could have survived very comfortably under the Communist system, except that the older he grew the more he prospered, and the more he prospered the greedier he became. He bought a four-story house in the suburbs of Lodz and, as a front that legitimately enabled him to visit farmers around the country, he maintained a small farm equipment spare-parts workshop. Middle age had softened his caution though, and he went against his own basic rule. He had gained too much and was no longer invisible.
The authorities began to take an interest in the activities of Janusz Palusinski. His spare-parts business was discreetly investigated and it was found that the profits derived from it by no means accounted for the relative luxury in which the owner appeared to be living. His movements were watched. Party officials came to his house to question him. His answers were not entirely satisfactory. They took away all documents found in his home, warning him that they would return as soon as the papers had been thoroughly studied and that he was to keep himself available until such time. Janusz stole away that same night, taking with him what little cash he had and leaving behind his automobile, knowing how easy it was for the authorities to trace any vehicle on the roads of Poland. He left the city on foot, sleeping in cheap lodging houses at night, traveling by bus during the day, too afraid even to take trains. His journey led him toward the north, in the direction of the great forests. He had no idea why, panic and self-preservation driving him onward without calculation, only instinct telling him that the dark forests were a place to lose oneself and be lost to others. He was aware of the severe punishment dealt to those caught trading on the black market and was sure that his mind would never stand another term of imprisonment—too many dreadful memories would have been rekindled. There was no grand plan to his escape, no considered scheme for invisibility once more. Janusz fled merely because he had no other choice.
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