PACULA’S BRUSH WITH HISTORY

“I was born just 11 miles from the concentration camp, but as a child growing up in Poland I knew nothing of what had taken place there. Now I’ve made this story. Now I do. . . .”

Polish actress Joanna Pacula, 28, first seen in this country in “Gorky Park” four years ago, learned about the extraordinary story behind “Escape From Sobibor” when she was cast as the Jewish seamstress Luka in the three-hour docudrama (to air on CBS, April 12).

She had not read Richard Rashke’s book detailing the true story of how, in 1943, 600 ill-fed and virtually unarmed Jewish prisoners rose up and killed many of their guards, enabling half of their number to escape. The prisoners had been destined for the gas chambers at the extermination camp of Sobibor in Eastern Poland.

It marked one of the very few Jewish victories to come out of the Holocaust. Immediately after the escape, the Nazis razed the camp, wiping out all evidence of its existence.

“In Poland, we tend to hear about Auschwitz and Treblinka and the big concentration camps, but not about small places like Sobibor,” Pacula said the other afternoon. “So hardly anyone knows the story. And those who survived (27 are known to still be living) are scattered all over the world.”

Even Pacula’s mother, who visited her on the set in Yugoslavia, where the film was shot (Jack Gold directed from a Reginald Rose script), knew nothing of the story.

“She wouldn’t,” Pacula said. “She was just 5 when it all took place.

“I’ve seen most of the things done about the camps--’Playing for Time,’ ‘Sophie’s Choice’--but ours is very different,” she said. “More of a docudrama. And very chilling. I invited some friends to see a preview in New York the other day, and they were devastated by it.

“Even for us, filming at night in a forest, it all seemed frighteningly real: the train arriving with the victims, the barracks, the floodlights. The whole camp had been reproduced accurately from descriptions of survivors, three of whom worked on our film.”

Filming “Escape From Sobibor” marked Pacula’s first reunion with her mother since she came to the United States five years ago to visit a friend in New York and stayed on to play Irina in “Gorky Park.” She had been suggested for the role by her friend Roman Polanski.

“I haven’t been back to Poland since,” she said. “Half of me would like to return; the other half--I’m not sure. I’ve talked often to my mother on the phone, of course, but I had not seen her till she came to Yugoslavia. It was an emotional meeting.

“And for her it was a big moment. She’d never been out of Poland before, never been on a plane, never visited a movie set. She wandered around like a child. When I had to cry in one scene, she was amazed. ‘How do you do that?’ she asked. ‘It’s my job,’ I said.”

Her mother, however, had seen “Gorky Park” on cassette.

“My sister got hold of one with German subtitles,” Pacula said. “For them it was like watching a silent film. They don’t speak English or German. But they saw me on the screen and were very proud.”

Pacula, a classical actress in Poland before coming here, was not fluent in English when she was cast in “Gorky Park.”

“If I’d been more at ease with the language, I could have been better in the film,” she said.

And since that time she does not think she has had much opportunity to show her range (in films like “Death Before Dishonor” and TV’s “Crossings”). She is happier about a movie she just completed in Paris, “Sweet Lies,” in which she co-stars with Treat Williams.

“For a long time I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to stay in America or not,” she said. “I found it hard to decide. But now I’ve made up my mind, so the next step is to lose my accent completely. I know that if I want to live and work here, I must.

“My voice teacher says if I’m prepared to work at it, I should be able to lose it in a few months and have no accent at all. I went for my first audition as an American the other day. I didn’t get the part, probably because I didn’t have enough confidence. But in six months’ time, you’ll see. . . .”