Sepulchre (18 page)

Janusz grew, his frame sturdy enough, but his flesh lean and undernourished. He was disliked by the other boys of the village (who had no particular regard for the senior Palusinski's ancient act of valour) for Janusz could best be described as shifty, always on the edge of any group, constantly seeking ways to better his own lot (he was hungry most of the time, a discomfort that can easily shape a person's character). As the years passed and the boy was able to take on more man's work (albeit unenthusiastically), conditions for the Palusinskis improved. They were still impoverished, true, but then so were many of their neighbours, and Henryk's old wound continued to make prolonged labour difficult: yet food for the table slowly became less of a problem and occasionally there were zlotys enough to spend on other things, usually new farming equipment. Poland itself was establishing a more benevolent governance, initiating land reforms that were beneficial to the small farmholder, creating a social security system and organising health care for its population. Janusz Palusinski might well have grown into a relatively normal young man had not yet another unfortunate chapter in Poland's history begun.

On 1st September 1939 Germany invaded, bringing a reign of terror that would eventually lead to the total subjugation of the Polish people. Important officials, potential troublemakers, men of learning were to be eliminated under the new order of the General Government. The Polish workers were to be intimidated into submission: the murder of countless numbers saw to this. Failure to obey the edicts of the Third Reich meant immediate execution or being sent to a concentration camp (which usually resulted in a more lingering death). All Jews were to be exterminated.

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 meagre 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 (not to mention stubborn) and the village was no mare, 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 endeavoured 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 plough 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 frontdoor. 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 recognised 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 Mikolaj 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 neighbours, 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 short-lived.

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 farmers. 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 reviewing his home.

To his credit, Janusz did not instantly break under the Nazi threats and beatings which followed. However, it took less than a day at the dreaded Lublin interrogation centre 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 centre 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 realise he had certain advantages over many of the other inmates which 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 dreamt of great plates of sauerkraut, sausages, boiled pork and pickles, with coriander seeds mixed in. And often he dreamt of when he was nine years old, of the night his father had stolen the tiny pig, how his family had feasted, the park 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 far him. Unlike many of his fellow internees far whom food had become almost an abstract thing- they still craved it, still licked their bawls which 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 towards his vision, perhaps as a drowning man might reach for a swooping seagull.

He worked as hard for his gaolers 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 his readiness to serve the Third Reich beasts that he was hated for. 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 Unerwunschte-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-coloured. 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 jewellery 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 amidst 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 shrivelled, his bones jutting with deep hollows between. He began to have fits of coughing that drained him of any strength he had left, and bloodspots speckled his palm when he took his hand away from his mouth. Delirium soon followed. Finally he was moved to a but 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 towards one focal point. It was a smell. Familiar. From the past. He stared into the greyness 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 centre 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 one another. 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 towards the table, towards the source. The meat was dark red, blood seeping onto the rough wooden surface. He moved closer.