In the Sewers of Lvov (11 page)

‘Who are you?’ a woman asked. ‘What are you doing here?’ She had been asleep on the floor. In fact, she had been there all the time.

‘It’s all right, nothing to be afraid of,’ Margulies said. He had no idea whether he was talking to a Jew or Gentile. She explained that she had climbed up into this little room, but had no idea where she was. ‘I’m completely lost.’

The men explained that they were living together down in the sewers, where it was safe. She should join them.

‘No,’ she said. She had been down there since the liquidation, but couldn’t take it any longer.

Margulies explained that she was no longer in the sewers, but in a cellar beneath the barrack. She peered at the light coming through the hole in the floor and declared that she wanted to get out of the
city, into the countryside. The men explained how dangerous this would be, that there was little chance of her getting through the town unnoticed, but she was adamant. They saw no point in arguing and so Margulies described for her how to get to the street, then to the Opera House and then the road that would lead out of town. They said goodbye to each other and watched her go. Then they slipped down the shaft, Berestycki clutching the stove.

Margulies became quite adept at these forays up into the barrack. As he seemed always to be away on brief expeditions to dangerous waters, returning laden with treasures, the group decided he had earned the nickname ‘Korsarz’. In English, corsair or ‘pirate’. ‘Korsarz’ soon discovered that there was another member of the group willing to take such risks. Klara was a very quiet, unassuming individual. She has always claimed, ‘I think basically I was a coward. I don’t think most people would admit such a thing, but it’s true. I just wanted to live, so badly.’ Despite her modesty, Klara threw herself into whatever work was necessary. ‘Whether it was a man’s job or a woman’s, Klara took it on uncomplainingly.’ Paulina reflected.

For Korsarz, Klara became a real companion, someone who was prepared to share responsibilities, and the risks. ‘She was a real mover. She would do it, she would get up and go. One day, after I had been up a couple of times, I wanted to go back to the barrack, but Chaskiel was ill and preferred to stay behind. So Klara came with me. No one else would go …’ Margulies recalled.

They moved about the empty barrack together looking for something to take with them. Klara remembered her first impressions: ‘It was so sad, just a deserted dump. All the very best things were already gone. We brought whatever we could. A bucket, a saucepan. Maybe a dress and some shoes. Something to wash our face and hands.’

Korsarz had found a tray and given it to Klara to load with plates and cups. Suddenly they heard the sounds of boots crunching across the ground outside. ‘And I remember, I dropped the tray! And God Almighty, you never heard such a crash. I thought, that’s it, we’re all dead now.’ They froze, waited and heard nothing. Perhaps whoever
it was outside was also waiting for them to make another noise. Nothing happened, and when Margulies thought it was safe, they moved quietly back into Weiss’s room and down into the sewers.

After a little more than a week in the chamber, as they lay there dehydrated and in agonies with diarrhoea, they were suddenly hushed by great liturgical sounds that came down from the church above.

‘The feast of Corpus Christi,’ recalled Chiger.

Though there wasn’t a Catholic amongst them, they all knew the great religious days of the Roman Church as well as any priest. Like most Polish cities, Lvov moved to the rhythm of the great Christian holy days. They could all recall past occasions when they would have watched by the side of the road as the procession made its way through the town to church. There, the powerful singing would soon make the building resonate, as it did that day, right down to the foundations. While above ground, the narrow streets would carry the music great distances, into other neighbourhoods.

As they listened to the service, the bright young sound of the children’s choir pierced the stone work. Chiger’s seven-year-old daughter remembered the experience vividly. ‘I could hear the children going to church. They were talking to their mothers. I remember a little girl asking her mother for some flowers. And I asked my mother, when can I have flowers, when will I see flowers again?’

Somehow, out of the depth of their despair, Paulina found some small crumb of comfort.

‘Someday you’ll have flowers, I promise you.’

Whenever Socha arrived he brought with him news and encouragement. It was unquestionably the high point of the day. He’d ask about the children and perhaps bring them something to cheer them up. Chiger, though always glad to see him, found these visits frustrating. As Weiss was the leader, he naturally assumed responsibility for distributing the food. Halina became his assistant, taking the food from him and passing it round. This invested her, along with Weiss, with immense authority. It was a situation which irritated some people, especially Chiger, who were of the opinion that
Weiss and Halina never distributed the food fairly. Chiger claimed that Weiss’s own friends always received their ration of bread first; his mother, the Weinbergs, the Orenbach brothers and Halina. The others had to wait and seemed to get short measures.

This perhaps innocent practice was the kind of little issue that eventually led to mistrust, and then to deep resentment. Chiger began to have serious doubts about this man Weiss. He continued to turn the same question over in his mind: ‘It puzzled me, what prompted Weiss to abandon his wife and daughter? Yet he had brought with him a young girl, Halina, and some of his friends.’ This thought had bothered Chiger from the very outset. Indeed, he seems to have been somewhat preoccupied with it for he returns to it in his memoir again and again. Though there never had been, nor did there develop, any romantic relationship between Weiss and young Halina, she did assume the role of his assistant with some relish. Perhaps an air of haughty authority in this strange young woman annoyed Chiger, a man used to being treated with greater respect. Whatever the reasons for his suspicions, there is no doubt that they coloured his perception of Weiss as someone less than trustworthy. Coupled with the issue of the food, it created something of a gap between Weiss and his group of friends and the Chigers.

Chiger was also irritated by what he considered to be Weiss’s fawning obsequiousness in Socha’s presence. He would listen with growing annoyance as Weiss and his friends engaged Socha in small talk as the food was handed out. Talk that was sprinkled with flattery and praise which, Chiger was amazed to see, Socha accepted uncritically.

What lay behind Weiss’s flattery, and indeed behind the entire problem of the relationship with the Chigers, was money – or rather the lack of it. While it was generally accepted that the women would not have to provide for their upkeep, it had gradually become apparent that some of the men had been less than honest about their liquidity. Most people were ignorant about each other’s resources and from the beginning it had been agreed not to be too forthcoming with the sewer workers, either. This was sensible, for if Socha was never told how much money they
had, nor how it was distributed, then he could never be tempted to favour one member of the group over another. Chiger had always been in tune with this idea. He had assumed, probably correctly, that their survival depended upon their solidarity, their ability to act and think as a single unit and so, in the interests of solidarity, he never betrayed the fact that Weiss actually didn’t have any money at all. The money due to the sewer workers was simply made up each week as though it had come from the entire group, and handed across. Only Chiger knew that Weiss was penniless, and only Weiss knew that Chiger was making up more than half the entire total out of his own pocket.

It is possible to speculate that Weiss, and perhaps some of his companions, felt extremely vulnerable under these circumstances. But if he felt in any way indebted to Chiger, he made no show of it. In Chiger’s account, Weiss did nothing to acknowledge the imbalance in their relationship. Yet Weiss must have felt some anxiety about his situation, as from all accounts he seemed to be obsessed with securing his guarantees with Socha. Chiger was convinced this explained the gushing blandishments heaped upon Socha during his visits. But then, once Socha and Wroblewski had left, Weiss and his companions sat huddled together, incommunicative, deep in dour conversation.

The relationship between the Chigers and Weiss eventually set in motion a whole series of awkward under-currents. Though he had been the leader of the project from the outset, and his position had been unassailable, Weiss had gradually come to realize that the real power within the group, the real authority, lay with Chiger. From the accounts that are available, there is no evidence that Chiger had ever shown any sign of wanting to wield his authority. ‘How could we take charge? We had two children to take care of,’ recalled Paulina.

Yet there is no mistaking the anxiety he had about the Weiss faction, which he described as a ‘destructive element … rebelliously inclined and not suited to co-operation.’ He also described how ‘some of these individuals separated themselves into small groups and whispered and planned troublesome plots to their advantage.’ He also overheard ‘… conversations, complaining
about how they were paying large quantities of money and yet were obliged to tolerate the most wretched conditions imaginable.’

There are elements of paranoia both in Chiger’s account and in Weiss’s reported behaviour. Nevertheless, it is clear that Chiger was worried by these soundings. Given that he believed their survival depended on mutual reliance and trust, he saw the situation as a growing threat: ‘No one could escape his or her responsibility to the group … but the group was not well balanced.’ That kind of objectivity was in short supply. They were all, to a greater or lesser degree, still traumatized by the events that had led to and concluded with the liquidation of the Julag. All of them had seen horrors which would haunt them for the rest of their lives. They were living under a constant though diminishing fear of being discovered and they were all coping with anxieties about the people from whom they had been separated. All of this might easily have caused a group to sublimate their feelings by means of a series of trivial complaints. It was the Chigers who felt most isolated. They tended to sit on their own, with their children on their laps, trying to keep out of harm’s way. Paulina was certain that ‘We would never survive with Weiss in charge.’ All their anxieties about the future became rooted in Weiss. They felt they were subject to his whims and that there was nothing they could do about it. But if they felt friendless, then Weiss probably felt the same.

However, most of the others were not concerned with any developing factions. They were distracted from worrying about the future or reliving the past by getting on with the day-to-day needs of their survival. Margulies understood this and was always looking for work to do. Berestycki, though tied to Weiss through loyalty, remained a moderating voice. They all seem to have decided to stay away from money matters and leave all that to Chiger.

Perhaps it’s worth examining the question of money in more detail, if only to try to understand the arrangements and place the situation in some perspective. Chiger claimed in his memoir that
Socha was paid 500 zloties a day for food and for their protection. Chiger is the only source for this information, but there is also no evidence to contradict it. So how much was 500 zloties? This is a difficult question to answer simply because the German occupation so enfeebled the Polish economy that making a direct comparison with other currencies is now impossible. Certainly by 1943, the Polish zloty was so devalued, even within Poland, that the economy had virtually deteriorated into a system of barter. For example, a cigarette was far more valuable than a twenty-zloty note, while meat and fresh vegetables were commodities that commanded the highest premium.

At the time, the average monthly wage was around 200 zloties. For a sewer worker it was probably around 150 per month. So it would appear that Socha and his companions received almost the equivalent of their monthly wage – every day. But even this was not such a considerable sum. It was also calculated by the German authorities that it cost nearly 400 zloties a month to feed a non-Jewish citizen. Clearly, the average monthly wage was wholly inadequate. It is also worth noting what the German authorities had decided should be the daily intake of calories in occupied Poland. Germans were allowed to consume 2613 calories per day, an Aryan Pole 669 (which is virtually starvation level) and Jews in ghettos and camps, just 180. (An intake of 1000 calories per day is a weight-reducing diet.)

Now, Socha was having to provide bread, potatoes, onions, sugar – whatever he could manage – for 21 people. We also know that a loaf of bread cost around 70 zloties in 1943. Based on all these figures, we might make a rough estimate that out of the 500 zloties Socha was given each day, he might have been spending perhaps as much as a half of that on food. Once the remainder was divided between himself, Wroblewski and Kowalow, they would have been making roughly the equivalent of a loaf of bread a day for their trouble.
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Not insignificant, yet nor was it a fortune. According to Paulina, ‘We payed Socha a lot of money. A lot of money. And it was worth every single penny.’

Socha’s ostensible occupation each day was the regular maintenance
of Lvov’s sewers. Kowalow, the foreman, tended to supervise everything from the street. A small kerosine lamp was lit and lowered down the manhole. Attached to it was an angled mirror that reflected an image of the flame back up the manhole. The supervisor watched the colour of the tiny red flame he could see in the mirror. Should the colour of the flame turn blue, it indicated the presence of methane and that meant the sewers had to be evacuated. (Their methods haven’t changed to this day.) Stefak Wroblewski would descend first and await the tool bags stuffed with bread and potatoes. On one occasion, just as Socha prepared to lower the second bag, he was interrupted by a German soldier, who had been watching the operation and was curious about the contents of the bags. Wroblewski, with his bag over his shoulder, stood at the bottom of the ladder awaiting the second. The moment he heard the German’s voice, he quickly stepped out of sight, only to see the second bag plummet into the water that flowed between his legs. He snatched it up and waited while they dealt with the German. Kowalow said nothing. Under these circumstances, he left the talking to Socha, who complained bitterly that the soldier had startled him, causing him to lose his grip on his bag of cement, which was now lost in the waters below. The German gazed down into the gloom and might just have been able to make out the gas detector lamp and the quivering glint of sewer water. He shrugged and the incident was over.