Teen Became a ‘Go-Between’ of Mercy

Wladyslaw Misiuna was a schoolboy of 15 in Radom, Poland, when the Germans invaded in September, 1939. His life was turned upside down.

Early on, he joined the Resistance, not willing to stand idly by as the Nazis rounded up Jews and others who had no place in their “master plan.” Although reared Catholic, he says, “my mother had raised us to believe that, coming from the same God, we were all equal. How, then, could one people conceive of a plan to annihilate another?”

Recruited by the Germans to help prisoners at Fila Majdanek concentration camp start a rabbit farm to supply furs for soldiers at the Russian front, Misiuna, who was in his late teens, quickly established himself as a “go-between.”

Able to come and go freely, he smuggled in information as well as food and toiletries “and anything else I could beg, borrow or steal” for 30 young women whom he supervised at the rabbit farm. Out of his pocket, he bought bread and milk; he pilfered potatoes and carrots raised for the rabbits.

One prisoner, named Devora, contracted an infection that caused open lesions on her arms. Misiuna knew how the Germans handled the problem of sick prisoners: They shot them. He decided to infect himself with her blood. Then he saw a doctor in town and was given the necessary medicine, which he shared with Devora. “And both of us recovered.”

It was for that deed that Misiuna, a professor in Poland, was honored at a dinner in Los Angeles for Christian rescuers. Today, Devora Salzberg is in her 70s and lives in Israel. She was not able to make the trip.

Conditions were filthy at the rabbit farm. One day, as Misiuna was having the women boil their clothing, a group of SS officers came to inspect the farm. Asked what was cooking, Misiuna said it was food for the rabbits. Then one of the officers peeked into the caldron.

A witness later gave this account of the incident: As he and Misiuna “shook with fear,” the officer stood them against a wall and ordered his men to shoot.

But Misiuna spoke up: “Don’t you believe in cleanliness and hygiene? Do you want us to fall ill with dreadful infections?” The officer fumed for a moment, then shrugged, “Well, then, stay alive--you and these Jewesses!”

Often, as the German officers lunched, Misiuna transmitted intelligence and received instructions by hidden transmitter. Always, he kept the morale of the women high, telling them of German defeats, pleading with them to endure.

Finally caught, he was himself thrown into the camp, beaten and tortured, in a vain attempt to obtain underground secrets. He told nothing.

In January, 1945, as the Russians approached, the Majdanek prisoners were to be shot. “Before putting us in the trucks,” Misiuna says, “they made us register our names, one by one. I went up to the Germans and said I had to go to the bathroom.” When they refused, he just removed his pants. Then, “They said OK.” He walked to the latrine and hid.

In the confusion, he was left behind. He says, “The Germans were already on the run. . . . They wouldn’t spend a day looking for one prisoner.”

Today Misiuna, 66, is a professor at the Institute of Rural Areas and Agricultural Development, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw.

Misiuna has said people needed help and he helped. “It was that simple.”

But Maximilian Schell in his tribute said, “Nothing in life, we know now, is really that simple. But at a time and place when the world was dominated by a madman bent on eradicating the Jewish people from the face of the earth, there were voices who said, ‘No.’ One of the loudest belonged to Wladyslaw Misiuna.”