BY STACY ST. CLAIR AND JACK KOMPERDA
PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRIAN HILL

Jerzy Jankowski sells onions to Beata Sandacz, 28. The 55-year-old Warsaw resident went to work as a street vendor after a back injury forced him to quit his job with the city's transportation department.

WARSAW - At the conclusion of World War II, 24 million Poles found themselves at a crossroads.

The war had left their country in ruins, with 20 percent of its population gone and the Soviet Union set to impose Communist rule.

Those who fought in the Polish resistance were considered enemies of the new state. Those who opposed Communism were equally reviled.

If the Poles were to survive, they had two choices: They could accept Soviet authority and raise their children in their homeland or they could flee.

The fathers of Julian Kuta and Jerzy Jankowski made opposite choices, tough decisions that put their families on drastically different paths.

One man went to Warsaw. The other moved to England and Argentina before becoming one of the 258,000 Polish immigrants to live in the Chicago area during the 1960s.

One family initially struggled with its choice. The other prospered.

It would be 60 years before the fathers' decisions - coupled with a dynamic world economy - determined whose son ultimately would travel a smoother path.

Jerzy Jankowski's father grew up in a small town outside of Warsaw.

When the war ended, he needed a job and the capital needed workers. Warsaw had lost 700,000 residents - more than half its population - during the war and its revival depended upon newcomers.

Jankowski's father found a job with the police department and rose to commandant.

As a Communist Party member, he had a nice home and money to support his family. He also had enough clout to get a job for his son in the city's transportation department.

Julian Kuta works in his office at C & F Machine Corp., his manufacturing plant in Bloomingdale. He started the business in 1986, after years of listening to his father extol the virtues of being one's own boss.

Jerzy Jankowski, who went to work after finishing high school, earned nearly 2,400 zloty - about $600 - a month fixing rail lines and trolley cars. It was ample income to support his wife and daughter in their apartment on the outskirts of Warsaw.

He used to criticize the government in those days, but now he blames naivete for his past unhappiness. He contends he didn't know what he had until it was gone.

"Yes, people complained about Communism," he says, "but most people would rather have it back."

In the late 1980s, Jankowski saw the anti-Communism movement gain momentum. A weak zloty and rising consumer prices made it difficult to support his small family.

Afraid that Communism would collapse and send the economy into a tailspin, Jankowski took a leave of absence from his job and moved his family to Hanover, Germany in 1987. He spent the next two years futilely trying to enter the United States.

He supported his family by working as a farmhand, collecting eggs, tending to animals and plowing fields. He made 10 marks per hour, the equivalent of two days' pay back in Poland.

His financial success wouldn't last, however, because he had no one to sponsor his permanent residence in the United States or Germany. Shortly after the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, his immigration applications to both nations were rejected.

Dejected and unwilling to live in a country illegally, Jankowski returned to Warsaw in 1989 and went back to repairing trains. He toiled there until 1996, when a debilitating back injury forced him to retire three years before he qualified for a state pension.

At 47, he had to find a non-physical job to support his wife and daughter. He had no savings, no professional skills and no knowledge of the emerging free-market economy.

He turned to selling vegetables from the trunk of his car. He parks each day along Solidarity Avenue, a street named for the 1980s movement aimed at protecting the working class.

"It's enough," Jankowski says, "to make you want to cry."

When the war ended, Stefan Kuta had no place to go.

His hometown, Lwow, had been annexed into the Soviet Union and its residents relocated to other parts of Poland. Stefan had unwillingly left the eastern city in 1941, when the Russian army loaded his family onto a cattle car and sent them to Siberia.

He spent his days chopping wood in the forests and waiting for fate to intervene. When the Germans invaded Russia and the Allies needed more help, the prisoners were freed to form a new Polish army in 1942.

They were a sickly bunch at first, with most of the soldiers on the verge of starvation. Of 1.5 million people deported from eastern Poland, roughly 200,000 survived.

The Polish army served with distinction across Northern Africa and Italy. It won the critical Battle of Monte Casino, where Julian met and married Helena Fikus, an army truck driver who also had been imprisoned in Siberia.

After the war, the couple moved to England rather than return to Communist Poland. They found shelter in a refugee camp and began asking other countries for asylum.

They were granted entrance to Argentina, where some friends were living. By the time they left for South America, Helena had given birth to Julian and his sister in the camp.

The family relocated to a working-class neighborhood in Buenos Aires. Stefan Kuta found a job as a mechanic for Coca-Cola, but there was no work for his wife.

They lived in Argentina for 14 years, scraping by on Stefan's blue-collar salary and wearing Helena's homemade clothes. The Argentine economy, though often anemic, grew even weaker in the 1960s.

"People started moving out," Julian Kuta says. "They were always looking for better positions."

A friend offered to sponsor the family's passage to the United States and they accepted. On Oct. 23, 1963, the Kutas and their two children arrived in America with $2,000 in their pockets.

Helena and Stefan both found work in Chicago, eventually earning enough money to buy a house and a car. They bought a new home near Midway Airport and sent their kids to the local high school.

Julian Kuta, then 16, took a part-time job as a bus boy at an upscale restaurant. He saved his paychecks to buy a car and a motorcycle, impossible indulgences in Argentina.

"It was a completely different world," Julian says. "A better world, of course."

Julian occasionally skipped classes at his South Side high school and drove out to St. Charles. He loved the city's open spaces and quaint downtown.

Police once caught him playing hooky outside the local Dairy Queen. They called his father and reported him to the school, but it didn't matter.

Julian Kuta had fallen in love with St. Charles.

"It just seemed to me," he says, "like it was a wonderful place. I wanted to live there."

In May 1969, Julian went to visit Poland for the first time. A family friend had arranged for her niece, Teresa, to show him around.

A week after arriving in Warsaw, Julian proposed. He returned to Chicago in June and was drafted later that summer.

Teresa, 18, followed on a visitor's visa in September. They married on Sept. 10, 1969.

Six days later, Julian left for boot camp.

He eventually was sent to Vietnam, where he served as a U.S. Army Ranger and was shot during combat. He didn't resent his service or having to leave his pregnant wife behind in a land where she didn't speak the language.

"I was never bitter," he says. "We were helping out a country that was oppressed by Communism."

Jerzy Jankowski now awakes at 4 a.m. each day in his one-room apartment. While his wife scrambles his morning egg, he drinks steaming hot coffee from a juice glass.

Within the hour, the 55-year-old Warsaw resident gets into his car and drives to the farmers market along the Vistula River. The work day has begun.

As roosters crow to welcome the emerging sun, he shuffles slowly through the market. His hand absentmindedly rubs his aching lower back, which prevents him from standing straight or walking quickly.

He trolls the dusty paths, inspecting the produce sold under tin roofs. He stops periodically to haggle over prices, keeping careful note of the time.

By 10 a.m., he parks his car on Solidarity Avenue, just a block away from city hall.

Signs of Poland's new capitalist spirit abound. He sets up 10 yards from a Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut.

The French carmaker Peugeot occupies a gleaming skyscraper across the busy street. The building sits on the former site of Warsaw's main synagogue which the Germans destroyed during the Holocaust.

The building and the fast-food restaurants serve as symbols of Poland's new economy, largely hailed as the most successful of all Eastern European nations.

Several state-run companies, like taxi services and beer distributors, have thrived since privatization. The growing private sector now accounts for 70 percent of all economic activity.

A Warsaw monument pays tribute to the millions of Christian and Jewish Poles - including Julian Kuta's parents - who were forced into labor and death camps during World War II.

Capitalism, however, has left many victims in its wake. Some of them live on Solidarity Avenue, where they grapple with the soaring costs of living that accompanied Poland's new economy.

When state-controlled prices were removed in 1990, economists predicted costs would increase by 50 percent. In reality, they rose an average of 78 percent, with prices for some goods and services jumping 600 percent.

Foreign investors fired scores of workers, cutting a work force bloated under state ownership. The move, while necessary to create a healthy free-market economy, has left more than 3 million people out of work in a country of 38.6 million.

Capitalism has been especially tough in the rural areas, where small farms have found it difficult to survive. Unable to keep up with the larger agriculture companies, Polish farmers have seen their incomes drop 30 percent in the past seven years.

Most depend upon independent markets and vendors like Jankowski to buy their produce and meats.

After arranging the day's fruits and vegetables, Jankowski sits in his 1992 Renault hatchback. It's parked between the Kentucky Fried Chicken and a public housing complex.

The concrete apartment building, a demonstration of uninspired Communist-era architecture, shelters hundreds of struggling families. Most of them are unemployed, just like one in nearly every five Poles.

The rest struggle with low-paying jobs as cashiers or secretaries. Beata Parobycza works in a clothing store and earns $100 per month, half of which goes to her rent.

It leaves her with $50 a month or $12.50 a week to spend on food and incidentals in a city where Western European prices slowly are creeping in. For instance, a medium sausage pizza and diet Coke at the neighboring Pizza Hut costs $7.50.

"Do the math," she says. "People can't live on these salaries. Do the math."

Jankowski lends a sympathetic ear as he opens his hatchback and organizes the day's inventory. He has more than 100 pounds of apples, cherries, cabbage and potatoes piled in boxes, as well as an old scale to measure what he sells.

Before he can shuffle back to the front seat of his car, a regular customer from the apartment building inspects the plums and asks the price.

"Ma'am," Jankowski says, "you're looking so much more beautiful every time we meet."

The day continues to bring residents and shoppers from nearby stores, as well as police who try to chase him away.

On any given day, Jankowski says he'll be told to leave at least four times. He'll occasionally receive a $25 ticket for illegally peddling on the sidewalk.

He has a notarized letter from the shopkeepers and residents swearing he's a benefit to the community. He keeps it tucked in his car visor, but it does nothing to sway police or judges who often hear his appeals. They take no pity on the stooped man with a handicapped sticker on the front of his vehicle.

He spends a week or more in jail several times a year because he doesn't have the money to pay fines.

"How am I going to pay that?" he says. "I'd rather sit it out."

Yet, Jankowski keeps coming back to the same spot, partly because he likes his customers and partly because he has nowhere else to go.

He stays until sunset or until he sells out, whichever comes first. He drives home and dozes off, too exhausted to do anything else.

He sleeps for a few hours, then repeats it all again.

A 60-hour workweek nets him no more than $150 a month. The money, a fourth of what he made repairing trains, is spent before he earns it.

Rent and utilities run Jankowski and his wife about $85 per month. He spends another $35 on gas for his 12-year-old car.

That leaves $30 a month - less than $8 a week - for groceries and incidentals. His wife finds sporadic work as a housekeeper, occasionally bringing in an extra $25 a week.

"I can't get sick here," he says, "because there isn't any money left over to pay for drugs."

Poland's May 1 inclusion into the European Union does little to console Jankowski. It may open doors for younger generations, but it's probably too late for a middle-aged man with a high school education and a bad back.

"If the entire government could change hands, it would be better," he says. "It's the same people in government now who were there 20 years before. If I could find a way, I'd pack right now and leave."

Julian Kuta left Vietnam with a Purple Heart and a young family waiting for him in Chicago.

He took a machinist job and moved to the suburbs. When the economy slowed in the 1980s, his company began cutting benefits and laying off workers.

The changes prompted Julian to think about starting his own business. His father often extolled the virtues of being one's own boss, though he always worked for someone else.

His son decided to make the dream a reality. In 1986, Kuta opened C&F Machine Corp. in Villa Park.

The company, which manufactures precision parts, is one of roughly 12,000 area businesses owned by Polish immigrants, according to recent census figures.

Kuta hires people like himself, hard-working Poles seeking the American dream. Today, 13 of his 14 workers are Polish. They are part of a Polish-American community that pumps $37.9 billion into the local economy annually, according to the Polish American Chamber of Commerce.

When Kuta first opened his business, Teresa, who worked as a bookkeeper during the day, would go to her husband's office at night to help with administrative tasks. Oftentimes, the couple wouldn't get home until 10 p.m., as their two daughters were getting ready for bed.

Lucyna Cepielow dries stacks of hay just outside the rural Polish town of Zaluczne. The conversion to capitalism has been tough on small independent farmers like Cepielow, who have not been able to keep up with the large agriculture companies.

"Whatever we've accomplished, we accomplished on our own," Teresa says. "We worked hard for everything we have."

Throughout the past 30 years, the couple has helped other Polish families relocate to the United States. They have provided clothes, dishes, temporary housing - all things people offered the Kutas when they first arrived. Julian often drove around the city after working the night shift to help new immigrants find jobs.

They also bought Teresa's mother a home in Warsaw and financially supported several other relatives back in Poland.

"We helped people," Julian says, "because somebody helped us."

Their generosity has been returned to them tenfold. The Kutas now live a com-fortable suburban life, filled with a big house, nice cars and expensive vacations.

After Julian, now 57, moved his company to a bigger factory in Bloomingdale a few years ago, he realized another long-held dream. He bought a house in St. Charles.

He and Teresa built a custom home along the Blackhawk golf course in 1997. A few years later, they installed a swimming pool where the family now gathers for summer barbecues.

They have created a privileged, contented life they never could have known in Poland.

"I never would have been able to accomplish what I have here over there," he says. "You can't even compare the two."

Julian Kuta has just returned from a Mediterranean cruise.

He is tan, rested and eager to talk about a recent golf game with a famous race car driver. He's reluctant to brag about his financial success, but it's evident from the crystal chandeliers hanging throughout his impeccably decorated home.

He'd much rather talk about his parents and the difficulties they overcame.

"They gave us opportunities," he says. "When you have opportunities, you can do anything. It's all you need."

Jerzy Jankowski never will have the opportunity for leisure cruises or afternoon tee times. He'll work until he dies or his back becomes so painful it prevents him from walking.

He doesn't have much to show for his 55 years of hard work. His sole possession is his beat-up car. The government owns everything else.

He consoles himself with memories of his father, who was buried with full police honors when he died in 1999.

Jankowski is proud of what his dad accomplished, though he can't help but wonder what would have happened if he had chosen a different path at the end of World War II.

"If I had a way to get out, I would go," Jankowski says. "People just die here."

Continue: Helping the old country and the old neighborhood