In the Sewers of Lvov (12 page)

Socha and Wroblewski’s arrival was heralded by the sound they made shuffling their way through the pipes. As Chiger recorded in his memoir ‘We could hear them making their way through the mud and water for about half an hour before they arrived. With bags under their arms and the carbide lamp suspended from their teeth, they crawled for a kilometre through a “Forties” pipe, arriving breathless and exhausted.’

The city was criss-crossed with a network of concrete pipes that had been laid when the sewers were constructed. They were designated either ‘Forties’, ‘Seventies’ or ‘Eighties’, referring to their diameter. Forty centimetres was about sixteen inches, and an ‘Eighty’ is almost three feet. (I have crawled some ten metres through a ‘Seventy’ and have no wish to repeat the experience.)

Weiss took delivery of the bags while Socha and Wroblewski caught their breath. As Weiss and Halina distributed the food, the conversation was sprinkled with the usual praise of Socha’s extraordinary courage, inventiveness, ingenuity. Chiger thought to himself: ‘If it kept Socha sweet, why spoil the situation?’

But on this occasion, the conversation turned sour. A serious confrontation developed about conditions in the cavern. Socha claimed afterwards that he had sensed for some time the tensions that had been developing beneath the pleasantries. All the whisperings and complaints that had been aired in his absence were brought into the open. The discussion, encouraged by Weiss, became more and more heated until it suddenly erupted into a series of blunt remarks about the fact that he was being well paid and everyone should receive ‘better service’. The Chigers sat in silence throughout the scene, too embarrassed to comment. Socha, having assumed or having been invested with authority, had become responsible for everything.

Socha’s response surprised everyone. He was a mercurial character. For the most part he was cheerful and eager to please, but when slighted he could become furious. At first he was stunned. According to Chiger, once he’d realized he was under attack, he retaliated by lecturing the group on the realities of their situation. That they were alive and, for the present at least, safe. All of which had, until then, depended upon his willingness to help. Certainly the money was an incentive, but it could hardly really compensate for the risks he and his friends were taking.

‘There are things you ask for, which I simply cannot provide,’ Socha said. Chiger claimed that Socha also reminded them ‘… that his original agreement was with the Chiger family only and that everyone else had simply become attached.’ However, Margulies, Berestycki and Weiss himself, all presumed to have their own special relationship with Socha. According to Chiger, Socha’s ultimate message was ‘about discipline’, without which he saw no hope of success. Chiger seemed to see some link between Socha’s deeply religious views and a belief that discipline in adversity was a fundamental principle.

Though Socha must have been bitterly disappointed by their
attitude, he never threatened to betray them. Instead, as he listened to more and more complaints, he confessed that he was deeply disappointed and discouraged.

‘In the face of all this, you argue!’

Though there was no talk of betrayal, he did hint at abandonment.

‘Why should we return? You demand the impossible.’

Naturally everyone was frightened by these remarks, Chiger in particular. They seemed so out of character with the jolly, beaming moon-face they had come to know. Normally Socha’s presence issued forth calm and hope, but his words were bitter and the man seemed close to tears. After he and Wroblewski had departed, there remained a deep sense of foreboding. He had succeeded in concentrating their minds wonderfully.

Small groups gathered in corners to conduct long examinations of the situation. A constant murmur of voices, interrupted by looks and glances. The little space was rent with tension, suspicion and fear. Weiss’s leadership had succeeded in creating nothing but anxiety and distress. Socha’s reaction to the group’s dissent had made some reconsider the position, and now it was Weiss and his closest friends who began to feel isolated. He tried to reassert his authority through arguments, threats, and bullying.

Twelve feet below the street, choking on bad air, coping with gut-wrenching pains while trying to control their irregular bowel movements, the whispers of a few conspirators soon became, for Chiger, the threat of disaster. For Weiss and his confederates, the situation must have seemed desperate indeed. Whenever he approached the Chigers, he smiled and spoke with great deference. Yet the Chigers noticed that at every opportunity he ran his hands up and down the hems of their clothes, looking for where they had hidden their money. When Chiger discovered one of Weiss’s friends going through their pockets, a state of open hostility developed between the two camps. Weiss perhaps never understood how to hold the group together, but one thing was clear: he was running out of options.

It had become the routine to fetch fresh water first thing in the morning, before Socha and Wroblewski arrived. About two weeks after they’d settled into the cavern beneath the church, Margulies and Berestycki set out together, having decided to make the long journey to where Jacob had fitted the tap. They made their way back towards the Peltwa, down to the tunnel where the doctor and his group had settled.

As they stepped into the entrance to their tunnel, they found that the normal gentle flow of water had reduced to a faint trickle around their feet. At the same time, the most putrid smell seemed to linger within. Margulies stepped into the tunnel and held his torch aloft. The odour grew stronger and a horror slowly gripped him by the throat.

In the beam of his torch he found a wall of bodies, pressed together in a kind of human dam. An army of rats, feeding on the bloated corpses, scattered as the light splashed about. At his feet Margulies caught sight of children’s toys and here and there, the glint of stainless steel and glass. Slowly, it all became clear. In amongst the wall of flesh were the remains of the doctor and the contents of his medical bag were strewn across the floor.

Margulies recalled how on that crazed night he and Klara had fought their way along the ledge and he had seen this group huddled together with the doctor. Margulies and Berestycki had come across them again during a visit back to the barracks and Socha had mentioned them from time to time. Whether he had ever delivered food to them, Margulies didn’t know. He presumed not, for the evidence before him suggested that they had all found a different solution.

One by one the doctor had injected them with cyanide, before finally giving himself the same poison. Then, as each body had fallen lifelessly to the floor, it had created a small dam against the flow of water. The water had rolled the bodies against each other creating a steep wall, behind which the water built up until the tunnel had been all but stopped up. Margulies called back to Berestycki and led him to the scene. As Margulies described it, each sweep of the torch seemed to disturb a nest of rats. They returned to the group and, when Socha arrived, reported what they’d found. He was horrified. Margulies offered to show him the sight, but he refused to go.

‘Just pull them away into the Peltwa, otherwise they will cause a flow-back.’ But he would not go with them to help. He seemed appalled at the prospect. Together, Berestycki and Margulies wrenched each corpse free of its hold, sending it down the tunnel towards the Peltwa. Suddenly, they all came free and a wave of putrid water, limbs and torsoes flooded past, threatening to carry them all away. Once the cargo had emptied into the river it disappeared. It didn’t seem an odd form of burial at all, indeed it seemed curiously dignified.

Margulies and Berestycki’s news about the doctor’s group increased their sense of isolation and forced them to consider the possibility that they might be completely alone. For some this was not an unnerving thought. The smaller the numbers the greater the security. For others, the prospect was terrifying. While there had been the possibility of contact with other survivors – the occasional message passed back and forth – there seemed a way of retaining some grasp on the real world. But the thought of being utterly alone in the sewers meant that they had to survive with the resources they had to hand, both mental and physical. Socha’s news from the outside world became even more vital. But on his next visit, he confirmed their worst fears.

‘All the others we left behind, scattered about – all dead. All liquidated. They had to leave the tunnel to find food and were caught …’

Socha’s account is confirmed by a survivor who had lived with some sympathetic Catholics in one of the non-Jewish areas:

Hundreds of Jews hid in the sewers. For many days they stayed in the tunnels where the sewage of the great town flowed. Many of them died. Many went mad. Only after fourteen days did the survivors emerge, driven out by hunger. They put out their heads. Their faces had been contorted into grimaces. Madness was in their eyes.
¹⁰

It seems no one in the street suspected that there might still be others, bravely holding out.

Meanwhile, Socha had further news.

‘There are still arrests going on, though not so many. Some Jews with forged Aryan papers were handed over to the authorities by some people …’

‘By Ukrainians?’

‘Ukrainians, and Poles. They shot the Jews. The ghetto of course no longer exists and people go scavenging for whatever they can find. You know, Jewish treasure.’

With Socha’s news they were left with no choice: they had to stay in the sewers, somehow cope with the conditions and with only the faces they saw before them. The personalities, the strengths, the weaknesses, the tempers, the irritations, and the fears that had already begun to flourish in that tiny space were all they would know for months to come. Apart from their courage, all they were left with was the hard physical reality of their domain.

The everyday hardships they had to contend with both increased the stresses between them and at the same time focused their minds on survival. The sheer filth of their environment is hard to recapture. The walls of the cavern were constantly wet and crawled with a weird strain of albino insects. They were regularly invaded by small squadrons of rats, ferocious in their quest for food. These extraordinarily robust creatures scurried everywhere. If anyone tried to sleep, they were inevitably woken by a high-pitched clatter of cold feet across their hand or face. They appeared whenever the food arrived and fearlessly launched themselves at any unguarded scrap. It finally befell one of the group to stand guard with a pile of stones to throw at the beasts while others slept or tried to eat.

After a number of weeks some semblance of order had begun to evolve, the beginnings of a routine. Weiss maintained his role as leader, arbiter and ultimate authority and was still assisted by Halina, who had assumed an air of superiority amongst the women. The ‘Princess’, they called her, with her long tresses of hair which she combed obsessively.

Despite the rumblings from Weiss and his colleagues, there developed a spirit of hope. But then, quite without any warning, everything was thrown into confusion again. While the sewer workers were visiting one day, two young sisters stepped forward to speak with them. At first they spoke quietly and without rancour, but when their words were brushed aside they became angry. They could not cope with the conditions any longer. Nor could they tolerate not knowing how long their confinement had to last. They were adamant. Once the full measure of their feelings had been expressed, Socha and Wroblewski who had patiently listened, said nothing to try and discourage them. But their outburst came as a complete surprise to Weiss and Chiger, who had serious misgivings about letting them go.

Chiger interrupted to lecture them on the hopelessness of returning to the surface. He explained the realities of the liquidation and the consequences for any Jew discovered alive. Margulies pitched in and described what it was like up above, but their arguments only seemed to make the girls more desperate to leave. They pleaded, even begged to be shown out of their dungeon. Socha and Wroblewski suggested that it might be possible to find a Catholic family somewhere that might give them refuge. Paulina later recalled: ‘They were both quite pretty, with good faces – not Jewish looking.’

Then someone spoke up. ‘I’ll go with them. I have some money. It might be possible to do something for the girls.’ He suggested trying to contact some trustworthy Catholics, offering them money to take the girls in. ‘Maybe we can find something outside.’

No one now recalls who he was, except that he had come from Turka, Halina’s home town. His intervention was just what the girls needed and it was settled.

Margulies explained: ‘If you go, you go late. After dark. The police and Gestapo will be waiting for you. They know there are Jews in the sewers.’

Socha described how they could get up to the street and then he and Wroblewski left. Later, the three of them were wished good luck and long life as they took their leave of each and every member of the group.

‘Remember, no one can give you a contract to live,’ Margulies said as they left. No one knew their names, nor anything else about them. It was only days later that Socha reported that the girls had been captured and shot. Nothing was ever heard of the man who left with them.

The news fell upon them like a shroud. Further proof, if any were needed, of the terror that still prevailed on the streets above. It can only have strengthened the feeling of being utterly trapped or imprisoned. Inevitably tension increased and tempers shortened. Paulina recalled the rising tension: ‘We remained an unhappy group. Unbalanced and at odds with each other.’ She also commented on how Weiss’s leadership continued to stir up resentment and fear. ‘I wouldn’t allow my children to wander away from us. I was afraid we would be separated.’

The atmosphere became highly charged and was likely to explode into arguments without warning. Perhaps a child had begun to cry – or had been crying for some time. Pawel was still in desperate pain, doubled over with fierce peristaltic cramps. He had never cried very loudly. He and Krisia had taught themselves self-restraint while hiding in the ghetto. Kristina recalled: ‘Because we were afraid of being discovered, we knew we always had to be quiet. We learnt to cry without making a sound, we swallowed our tears. It is still the same today. Whenever I’m crying, nobody knows. It goes in, it doesn’t go out.’