THE LIST (Limited Series Notes)
Limited Series, Mini Series – call it what you will, either way I’m definitely going tap this one out. I’ve renamed it ‘The List‘ instead of ‘Kill List’ – which is the name of a very good UK folk horror film.
[Some rehash] I write my notes longhand and then dictate them to the computer. Since Microsoft acquired Nuance, the maker of Dragon Naturally Speaking, I’ve found the Word ‘dictate’ tool much improved. Also, I must disable Grammarly and Word-editor to use it because if I don’t, it freezes up, noting errors as I speak.
Character notes for me is a complete bio – everything that happens to a character up to their first scene. These details reveal themselves as motivators or reasons why, and can be shown in flashbacks or through dialogue; so it’s never a waste of time to completely flesh out your character’s life.
CHARACTER NOTES:
Berek Kozak was taken from his Polish mother at age 11 by German officials because he fit their ‘Aryan ideal.’ (Not fiction, this happened to children throughout the occupied territories.) They renamed him Boris, but couldn’t tame him, and the abuse he endured made him into a twisted person.
Around 1954 he makes a ‘Kill List’ of those responsible for his past traumas and begins hunting and then murdering those on that list. In 1960, he reunites with a younger man (Arik Tarski) he met during the war and forges a romantic relationship–unfortunately, he’s homicidal need for revenge doesn’t wane and this puts him in the crosshairs of a young detective (Natan Bytner) who knows he’s responsible not just for this death, but many others since the mid-50s.
BEREK KOZAK (32)
In 1939, Lebensraum initiative scouts posing as wealthy women dolling out candy to children in the occupied territories, approach BEREK KOZAK, a green-eyed blond boy living in Drawkso (renamed, Dramburg during occupation.)
11-year-old Berek runs home to his mother, but soldiers follow him. They enter and seize Berek before his mother can hide him. The men bring him to a hospital where he undergoes a physical examination by Doctor Kleindienst, who deems him ‘Aryan.’
Taken to a Volksdeutsche School outside of Rybarzowice (renamed Reibersdorf), Berek meets Headmaster Wagner, who informs him that he will speak German by next month. Nurse Beck takes him and a few newcomers to their room, and when one boy begins crying, she calls Headmaster Wagner, who beats the boy in front of the others. Renamed ‘Boris,’ Berek excels at German yet endures harsh discipline from his instructor, Miss Muller, for privately speaking Polish to his classmates. Headmaster Wagner also beats him for using his real name. Berek lashes out at Nurse Beck one day, earning him a brutal beating from their physical education instructor, Mister Scheldt.
A year later finds ‘Boris’ favored by Mister Scheldt yet feared by the other boys. His grasp of German is exemplary, as is his behavior. Headmaster Wagner places Boris with the Vogel family, wealthy German transplants living in Lezno (renamed Lissa. Mister Vogel lives with his wife and the elder Misses Vogel. They present ‘Boris’ alongside three blonde daughters as their natural son. When the old woman asks if he’s from Sweden or Denmark, he tells her he is Polish; from then on, she treats him with disdain. ‘Boris’ accompanies Mr. Vogel to his candy shop in town and realizes that German men like Vogel now run many businesses that once belonged to Jewish people. Disheartened, Berek empties the cash register and flees the village by train.
Scharführer Horn apprehends Berek at Poznan station and out of the city, pulls over, and beats him senseless. ‘Boris’ recovers from his injuries back at the school, and in 1941, Nurse Beck declares him fit for a new placement. The 13-year-old moves into the townhouse of a less-affluent family outside of Opole (renamed Oppeln). Mister and Misses Lang have one daughter, another Lebensraum girl who acquiesces when Berek speaks to her in Polish. Both attend public school in 1941, where ‘Boris beats down the class bully and aggressively pursues the big brother of a friend when he spies the older teen kissing a boy. When Mister Lang discovers him shaking down other children for money, he immediately notifies Headmaster Wagner.
Scharführer Horn appears again, but Berek flees into metro Oppeln with the Lang’s daughter Eleanor (Eliana.) Horn apprehends the 14-year-old and murders the girl in front of his eyes. Frightened into compliance, Berek is put on a bus with twelve other problematic boys bound for a National Political Institute of Education in Sztum (renamed Stuhm). Upon arrival at the camp, their brutal commander, Richter, orders the newcomers to attack one another. When none of them move, he shoots one—telling the boys he will keep shooting down the line until they comply. Berek attacks the boy beside him, compelling others to do the same. Richter watches until ‘Boris’ is the last one standing. Considered ‘the best,’ Boris is given a room with other ‘bests’, a uniform, and a rifle.
Upon turning 15, Richter delivers ‘Boris’ and his battalion to a hotel where dozens of German girls serve drinks and make their intentions clear. Disinterested in women, Berek avoids going upstairs with any of them—but at night’s end, fellow cadets Krause and Hummel push him into a room with one of the girls. Unable to perform, they tell Richter, who then suspects ‘their Boris’ may be homosexual.
The next day, Gestapo officer Haas visits to assess ‘Boris.’ A hidden homosexual, Haas empathizes, and instead of sending ‘Boris’ to a death camp, he orders him to a labor camp. During transport, however, Berek escapes his handlers. He travels the rail lines and makes it as far as Elblag before his recapture. Berek languishes in solitary confinement after Lebensraum officials parse his identification number. No longer a ‘citizen of the Reich,’ they sentence Berek to a farm in the Borderlands. Haas personally escorts him for the drive, but just outside their destination in Kolno, Haas parks and rapes Berek.
Defeated and demoralized, Berek joins eight other Lebensraum failures at the farm of a cruel antisemitic farmer named August Jarosz. Several weeks under Jarosz’s abusive yoke finds him and the others planning a revolt. After beating the 16-year-old for refusing to service his wife, Jarosz ties Berek up in the barn like an animal; the others revolt, but the farmer sets traps, killing most of them. When Jarosz begins murdering the remaining mutineers, his wife calls Haas, who arrives with two infantry officers to round up the three remaining boys: Berek (Boris), Viktor (Van), and Pavel (Paol). After a lengthy stand-off, Horn and the men acquire the boys – killing Van and Paol.
Unwilling to give up on the tall, handsome blonde, Horn keeps the boy awake for days at an installation in Pultusk and reconditions Berek to accept his ‘Boris’ identity. News of the Soviet invasion in 1944 leads Horn’s superiors to take possession of ‘Boris,’ placing him with a Volkssturm unit headed by a sadistic man named Engel. The unit’s job is to protect hiding Germans unable to flee. One day, Berek intervenes when Engel beats a younger Czech boy, and ends up killing the man. When the others turn on him, he kills them as well.
Berek crosses paths in war-torn Warsaw with a group of Soviet soldiers. He earns their trust by telling them where German civilians are bunkering throughout the city. He recounts being taken from his mother and forced to ‘be German.’ Horrified, the soldiers allow Berek, now 17, to raid homes and bunkers. Vasiliev, their leader, assigns Berek to a Polish officer named Wozniak. His bloodthirsty behavior impresses Vasiliev, but a concerned Wozniak tries mentoring the young man. One night, after drinking, Berek kisses Wozniak, who tells the boy never to do anything like that in front of the others.
Frightened that the other might kill Berek, Wozniak feeds the teen false information about Poles from Poznan imprisoned at Oranienburg. Berek leaves at night for Oranienburg and discovers the camp abandoned but for the sick. He goes through the German records and discovers his mother was never there. He returns to the Soviets to confront Wozniak but finds the man lynched outside Morwitz with a placard around his neck, signifying him as a ‘homosexual deviant.’
Berek breaks down emotionally for the first time; he cries and sleeps and remains under the tree several days until hunger forces him south. He arrives at the Polish Red Cross Hospital located in a partially bombed-out castle outside Bötzow. He smothers a young man on a stretcher, takes his place, and gets brought inside. He sweet-talks the nurses into letting him stay after he’s deemed healthy enough to leave; one of them, the matronly Miss Koblencja, puts him to work cleaning sheets and scrubbing bedpans.
One day, a group of survivors from Sachsenhausen camp arrive; one is a pink triangle prisoner. Berek curiously checks in on the patient and is shocked to find it’s a boy, not a man. The nurses wonder how anyone would consider a young boy to be homosexual. One of the nurses faints while stripping the boy. Miss Koblencja rushes Berek outside and closes the door. He learns from a younger nurse that Soviet soldiers found the boy in the camp medical ward, fully castrated.
The idea of a complete castration excites Berek, who has developed a fetish for scars. Driven to see what a complete castration looks like, Berek sneaks into the triage room and peeks under the boy’s bandages and finds he has no penis and testicles, only new sutures. Compelled by feelings he doesn’t understand, Berek attempts to lick the stitching, but the boy wakes. A storm begins outside, prompting Berek to help the orderlies hang wood panels over the glassless windows. He climbs to the triage ward on the third floor to attach panels over the wind-beaten plastic and spots the 12-year-old out of bed. The boy smiles at the lighting and thunder, mesmerizing Berek. Without warning, the boy walks off the precipice of a broken wall. Berek rushes to the ledge when he hears the screams. He looks down to find the boy floating in the flooded swimming pool. A doctor carries him out of the water and hands him to Misses Koblencja.
Soviet soldiers arrive the following day, and among them is Vasiliev. The men celebrate seeing Berek again, and when Vasiliev gets him alone, he asks if Wozniak ever touched him. He tells Berek that they caught Wozniak with a civilian man and strung him up for being a pervert. Berek masks his rage (for the first time) and assures him that Wozniak never touched him. That night, however, when Vasiliev goes to piss from too much drinking, Berek stabs him with an empty syringe, killing him. Invigorated by enacting his vengeance, Berek crawls back to his bed, and the next day, leaves with the Soviet soldiers.
On his nineteenth birthday in 1946, Berek applies to the job corps in Leba. When the port comes under Soviet control, his grasp of Russian earns him an apprenticeship with national rail. It takes five years for Berek to become a train operator, and in that time he discovers the names of the officials responsible for his collection and the murder of his mother; after one of them stands trial, he visits the mass grave, its location given in testimony, where he collects her ID, dress, shoes, and hair ribbon.
Now a young man, Berek’s route takes him into eastern Germany. While in Potsdam, he spots the former Miss Muller (now Mrs. Constance Steinmetz). Berek stalks the woman before breaking into her town home. He ties her up and forces her to eat until she vomits—he then forces her to eat the vomit. He kills her, leaving a written note about her involvement in Lebensraum and the Germanization school. Next, he visits the passenger rail center and flirts with the girl on duty. After a few sexless dates, he gets her drunk and takes her office key; he then goes through the rail pass records in her office, looking for the people on his ‘List’ like Edgar Kleindienst, Lena Beck, Byron Scheldt, as well as Johan Krause and Klaus Himmel…
Berek kills many on his list before getting a permanent assignment with Polish National Rail’s freight line in 1960. The new route takes him from Berlin to Poznan to Warsaw, and while passing through Skierniewice, he sees Ruta Koblencja’s obituary notice…
I’ve jotted down notes for Arik Tarski’s history – he’s the secondary protagonist caught up in Berek’s quest for vengeance; he becomes Berek’s silent and reserved lover, and beleives that once Berek kills everyone on his list, the pair will settle down and live a decent closeted life.