A life that really did come full circle

Stanisław Rusiniak (15 Jan 1919 – 17 Aug 2011) - slave camp survivor  by Gerry Carman

Perhaps the portent of being born in a graveyard on a stormy night warned of inauspicious events to unfold in the early life of Stanislaw Rusiniak. Yet he was a true survivor - one of the tens of thousands of middle Europeans who lived through the horrors of Nazism inflicted on them before moving half a world away to help build Australia in the post-war years.

He was no Dunera Boy - equally afflicted souls, who mainly as Jews were brutally dispossessed but somehow managed to arrive in Australia on the same ship, rebuild their torn lives and in many cases, gain fame in select professions.

Rusiniak, a Polish Catholic, survived Dachau and Gusen concentration camps and terrible privations and beatings as a slave labourer, to contribute to his new country in more humble yet meaningful work in factories.

Rusiniak, who has died of oesophageal cancer at Casey Hospital in Berwick, aged 92, started his new life as a migrant working as a fitter at Massey Ferguson in Sunshine. Finally, he assembled train carriages and trams for Commonwealth Engineering in Dandenong, from where he retired in 1984.

Testimony of the egalitarian society his ilk had helped create came when his youngest son, George, was one of his superiors as he electrical production manager at the Dandenong plant. Earlier, at another workplace, his eldest son, Stanley, did his apprenticeship as a fitter and turner with him. Rusiniak earned extra money cutting the hair of factory workmates; it was a trade he picked up in his youth but something to be avoided at all cost, according to his sons, because he cut only one style- short-back-and- sides- through the Beatles era and beyond.

A sudden German advance in World War I meant Rusiniak's mother, Michalina, was not able to get home and her son was born on a roadside in the graveyard of the Polish town of Pilich.

He began his schooling at age seven and recalled breaking his left arm while showing off his ice skates in the family lounge. At age 15, he began high school but also got a job as a trainee barber. He lasted only two weeks after indelicately grabbing the large nose of an important customer to force his head back to better shave the man's whiskers.

When he was 16, his mother sent him to a Catholic school that led to a seminary, but he ran away after three weeks; she was very upset but his father, Walenty, was delighted. Then, to age 20, he worked in the weaving industry, spinning and winding, and even repairing and servicing looms and other machinery. He also studied general business management at night school.

At 18, Rusiniak joined the Polish citizens military force and almost eight months after the Germans invaded he was arrested by the Gestapo. He was slapped, kicked and struck with a rifle butt when he tried to read a document he was told to sign.

Later he would learn that his father was shot dead on the doorstep of their home.
Rusiniak was taken to Dachau on May 5, 1940, and stripped of all his possessions. For six weeks he was forced to work on road construction and building an ammunition factory. Transferred to Gusen, he did heavy work in a quarry and building a railway line when he badly injured a knee.

He recalled on more than two occasions being whipped on his back 25 times, once for simply having slept near someone who escaped. Another time he was drenched in cold water and forced to stand under a guard tower for 24 hours in subzero temperatures. Life improved when for about 18 months, he was housed at a camp for Messerschmitt workers, where he made airframe ribs and rivets for aircraft wings.

He vividly remembered the day - May 5, 1945 - when he and his fellow captives were liberated from their slavery, starvation and misery by American troops. Offered chewing gum for the first time, he thought it was food, took a few bites and swallowed. His first cigarette in five years made him cough so much he never smoked again.
Placed at Linz camp No. 5, he joined US forces as a military policeman and was soon posted to Italy. Later, he was attached to British forces and when his division withdrew to Scotland in 1946, he went along. There he met Ethel Briggs, a farmer's daughter and local beauty, and then moved to England for work. They were married in October 1947.

Rusiniak developed tuberculosis as a result of the harsh conditions he had endured during the war, and in 1950 underwent a high-risk operation. A year's convalescence followed in a sanatorium.
He became a British citizen and worked three jobs - one of them at the de Havilland Aircraft Company. The family migrated to Australia in 1960.

Rusiniak had a triple bypass in 1993 after a heart attack. His wife, Ethel, died in April 1996, and he is survived by his sons Stanley and George, daughter Elizabeth, six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

The Rusiniak family assisted in preparing this tribute.
Article about Stanislaw Rusiniak extracted from The Age, Thursday, December 22, 2011

Germany history documents