Out of the Inferno: Poles Remember the Holocaust

Wanda Jordan

80 Out of the Inferno I lived in western Poland, I knew many German families and got along well with them. I was even warned by the mayor's mother, a German, about my impending arrest. I did not leave as I was urged to, because the bishop had sent me there and I wanted to stay. When I was in Dachau, I worked with Jews. I remember one Jewish man telling me while we shoveled snow together: "It wasn't like this in our dear Poland." He was only filling the wheelbarrow half full. I warned him that he had better fill it up before the authorities found out. "Here," he said, "you have to have callouses not on your hands but on your eyes." I was able to cope with concentration camp life because I had no sense of guilt for anything. I was arrested and sent to Dachau because I was a Polish priest. The Germans didn't even accuse me of anything; I was just lined up with other priests, arrested, and sent away. In 1951, Januszewski came to the United States and settled in Florida, where he served as a priest in several Roman Catholic parishes. He died in March 1987, at the age of seventy-five. WANDA JORDAN The year 1943 was one of terror. Faced with a more active and better organized Polish resistance, the Germans increased their terrorization of the Polish people in Warsaw and other towns. The rule of collective reprisal for any act of sabotage, sign of enmity, disobedience, or violence against German authority was now applied on a grand scale by introducing public executions of innocent victims. People were hunted down in the streets, trapped, put into vans, and driven to a prison. They formed a pool from which at random a hundred or more victims were taken at anyone time to their death. Before being delivered to the place of execution, their clothes were changed for paper sacks, their mouths were taped shut to prevent them from shouting "Long live Poland!" as had happened in the past, and they were injected with a drug to deprive them of any physical strength. I lived in Warsaw in a block of flats, in a corner room overlooking 81 Wanda Jordan Rakowiecka Street, across from barracks housing the Luftwaffe airmen . One day we heard shooting in the neighborhood, and we expected a new tragedy to follow. Indeed, the next day about 10:00 in the morning, the Germans cleared the street of traffic and pedestrians. Armed police with guns at the ready were posted along the street. An open truck with several armed police on board slowly passed by while a woman in uniform shouted through a megaphone in bad Polish: "Don't approach the windows or you will be killed." I remained standing by the window, partly hidden behind the curtain. I knew that the truck with prisoners would soon pass and I knew that I must see it and be witness to the horror. Soon the truck approached. The top of the truck bed was covered but the back was open. I saw figures lying on top of each other, forming a mass of indistinguishable bodies in bizarre attire of the same light color. I caught only a glimpse of the truck when I heard a terrific bang. I fell on the floor, deafened and stunned for a while before I realized that I had been fired at by one of the policemen posted opposite our house. The bullet had made a small hole in the window pane, close to the spot where my head was, and had then exploded against the opposite wall. Sitting on the floor, I was waiting for the final act. I did not wait long before I heard rapid bursts of machine-gun fire, while at the same time dance music blared from German loudspeakers provided for the occasion. One hundred seventy people were murdered that day. The next morning, huge posters listed the victims. Joe was no more than nine years old. He was one of the youngest volunteers eager to take an active part in the Warsaw Uprising, which to these youngsters was a great adventure. They formed an army of messengers, mailmen, and newspaper distributors. Many of them were Boy Scouts. Their task was to organize a mail delivery service, a very useful venture with so many Polish families scattered, lost, or killed during the tragic days of August and September...