In the Sewers of Lvov (19 page)

‘Where is my husband? How could he leave me here?’

Margulies was terrified that her screaming would attract attention and that he would then be discovered. He tried to calm her but she would not be quiet. Finally he confronted her.

‘Mrs Weiss, your husband is dead!’ he told her. ‘Your husband is dead!’

Realizing he would not be able to make himself understood, he knew that he had no option but to get away from her as quickly as possible. He ran from the wire, leaving her screaming for her husband.

Margulies was very bitter about not being able to save any of the women and children inside the camp. All that he had for his efforts was a letter from Manya. He realized, sadly, that his only realistic choice was to return to the sewers and do what he could to survive there. His presence within the camp, though shrouded in secrecy, left a residue of rumour that spread amongst the inmates. A survivor who escaped from the camp in November, recalled the stories he had heard:

Well, being in the camp I heard of some group who were hiding in the sewers. Evidently, they said, about fifteen to twenty people. And they said there were some brave Poles who worked in the sewers, that knew the sewers well and helped the Jews to hide and brought them food. That’s what I heard in the camp – that some people were in hiding; how they did it I don’t know, but I remember the event.
¹²

During the following day’s shift in the factory, Margulies spoke with the Sukakhan brothers who had looked after him during his stay. ‘I said we need two strong fellows like you down in the sewer, there’s plenty of work to do. But they wouldn’t come with me. “We’re going to die anyway, who wants to die in a sewer,” they said.’

When Margulies returned to the storm basin, some four or five days after having left for the street, he was greeted like a man returned from the dead. He ignored their surprise and
immediately launched into a description of where he had been and what he had seen. He delivered the letter from Manya and explained that there was nothing he could have done to help them. Then, when he had finished everything he had to say, someone told him about Genia’s baby. It sobered the return of their hero. And in the morning, it was his turn to fetch the water.

October was the month of the High Holidays. The New Year, Rosh Hashanah, and about ten days later, the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. It was a time of prayer, a time when they were reminded of the families they had lost or that had been taken from them. They were filled with memories of another age. But it was during the High Holidays that they heard the worst news from Socha. There had been reports that massive exterminations were taking place near the Janowska camp.

Rising up behind the camp is a small hill. On the near side, the side that slopes down into the grounds of the camp, was the location of the old sand quarry, Piatski. It was said that thousands of people from the camp had been taken there to be executed. It was as though the barbarities that had occurred during the liquidation of the ghetto were being revisited, all over again. In fact it was a time, though no one in the sewer would have known it, when right across the length and breadth of Nazi-occupied eastern Europe, the architects of the Final Solution seemed to have taken the High Holidays as their cue for igniting ‘… the crashing fires of Hell’.

The brigades that had for months been unearthing mass graves in the sands and heaving the remains on to massive pyres, were themselves being dispatched. The pyres smouldered day in and day out, while men and women were lined up and executed with cold efficiency. Over the weeks, the ruthless
Aktion
had deteriorated into an orgy of death. This account is from Leon Wells in his book
The Death Brigade:

The victims undress quickly, wanting to get it over with as fast as possible, to save themselves from prolonged torture.
Sometimes a mother will undress herself but will fail to undress the child. Or the child refuses to let herself be undressed out of panic … [If the child cried out in protest] the German police takes hold of the child by its small feet and swings it, crushing its head against the nearest tree, then carries it over to the fire and tosses it in.
¹³

Tens of thousands of corpses were consumed, the bones crushed in a specially designed mangle, the ashes spread on the surrounding fields and the fields seeded with grass.

All the work was carried out in the greatest secrecy, and any trespassers in the area would have been shot had they been discovered. Yet the scale of the operation was such that there would certainly have been witnesses. Rumours spread through the city and reached the ears of Socha and his colleagues.

Socha delivered the report not as hearsay, but as cold hard fact. He also reported that a small camp located out by the aerodrome, where people were used as slave labour for the Luftwaffe, had been completely liquidated. Paulina had a brother who died there. Margulies, of course, was reminded of all the faces he had seen during his brief visit. For Klara it must have been the cruelest news, having heard so recently that her sister was alive. But her pain was tempered slightly by having the letter and her sister’s forgiveness. Klara gave most people the impression of being a hearty and willing worker, ready to turn her hand to any job if it meant their survival. She confessed that she had been terrified throughout the ordeal and that that was what drove her to work so hard. Chiger described her as ‘good natured and eager for laughter, but at the same time, easily frightened and superstitious.’

Yet, despite her fears, Klara developed a powerful self-reliance that was a source of strength to others. She used to spend a great deal of her time on her own, going for walks through the sewers. Sometimes she would take the children with her, but often she was more than content with her own company.

I was walking on my own one day and I could smell soapy water. It was not perfume, but I could still smell soap. I walked ahead and eventually found the small hole above my head that
was running soapy water from a laundry. So, as I was on my own, I undressed and washed myself under this water that people had washed their laundry in. I didn’t do this every week, people don’t do their laundry every week in Poland. I used to have a wash like this about every four weeks …

In the streets above, the trees were losing their leaves and the cobbles were gradually being carpeted in a swath of bright copper. Wysoki Zamek, the great hill that frowns over the city, had shed its green cover and been transformed into a thicket of silver grey. The air had a fresh crispness and the towns-folk had begun queuing for rations of coal. From the countryside, woodmen were bringing cartloads of firewood to be sold by the roadside.

Paulina, like most of her companions, dreaded the approach of winter. ‘Every month that went by; two months, three, four … How long will it last?’ She woke once, during the dead of night, and could feel the air cold against her cheek, her breath vaporizing before her. Someone else was awake, she could hear them breathing. A harsh, rasping breath, like someone gasping for air. Paulina got up and stole quietly across all the sleeping bodies to Mrs Weiss. Her asthma was much worse since the temperature had dropped.

‘She took my hand and I told her, “Hush, Babsha, hush. Try and rest,”’ Paulina recalled. But the old woman was at the end of her strength.

She whispered, ‘Pepa, God will help you …’ The young woman watched her pass away: ‘And she died. With my finger I closed her eyes and put the cover over her head. I decided not to do anything but try and go back to sleep.’

In the morning Margulies roused everyone from their slumbers when he discovered that old Mrs Weiss was dead. As he was about to break the news to everyone, Paulina explained how Babska had died in her arms during the night. Margulies broke the news to Socha when he arrived at the entrance to the Seventy.

‘Is the body in the room there with you?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Get rid of it. I won’t come through until the body is gone.’

According to Chiger: ‘Although Socha was in many ways a fearless man, he was terribly superstitious. He could face almost any living adversary, but would not enter a room in the presence of a corpse.’ Margulies and Berestycki did what they could to shroud the body in some pieces of cloth and they then dragged and pushed their burden slowly down the Seventy. They carried it as far as the Peltwa where they slid it into the waters.

Socha’s relationship with the group was the cornerstone of the entire ordeal. He occasionally explained his feelings about the work he was doing, and in doing so revealed a little of his personality. He used to describe in very moving tones the story of his seeing Paulina for the first time: ‘When I squeezed through the shaft, into the little cellar, you were sitting there with Krisia and Pawel under each arm. Like a mother kite and her chicks.’ He nicknamed Paulina ‘Kania’, which means mother kite. ‘It was at that moment, when you were sitting there with the children, at that moment I decided to save you.’ He used grand, demonstrative language which aroused their curiosity. ‘I believe this is my mission. That I have been asked to do this, to atone …’

It was inevitable that all the members of the group grew deeply fond of him. ‘I know that he loved my son, and he loved Krisia too,’ recalled Paulina. The moment he arrived, he would go to the children to see how they were and would spend time playing with them, producing little gifts that brightened their eyes. Everyone developed their own individual relationship with him, separate and unique. Each felt their own special bond. Margulies and Socha were of one mind on many things. They both seemed to understand the language of the
demi-monde
, the way to cut corners, the way to get things done; and Socha had great respect for Korsarz’s talent for survival. According to Chiger, ‘He liked the pirate because he was reminded of himself. Someone who was very direct and honest in his dealings – and a very hard worker.’

His relationship with Berestycki was of a spiritual kind. They were both devoutly religious. Berestycki had great knowledge of the scriptures and Socha would enjoy hearing him recite them
aloud. Though anti-Semitism amongst simple Polish Catholics was virtually endemic, there seems to have developed between these two men an ecumenical link, based upon nothing more substantial than a profound devotion to the spiritual.

His relationship with Chiger was built on mutual respect. The day they first met, when Chiger had handed him a large wad of money, was a major turning point in Socha’s life. Both men knew that the money could so easily have been pocketed and then Chiger and his friends been simply handed over to the authorities. It was as though for the first time someone had trusted Socha or shown respect for his integrity, especially someone like Chiger. A man of learning, a man of some standing in the community – albeit during another time. Socha had been given more than just money, he had been given the respect of a gentleman and that simple transaction caused Socha to look beyond the fact that Chiger and his friends were outlaws. What Chiger saw as a bond between one honest man and another, Socha saw as something much more substantial. According to Paulina, ‘He would sit and talk with my husband about his problems. He never did anything until he had Chiger’s advice on it, no matter what the subject.’

Chiger’s trust was about to be tested once more. By the end of October everyone’s money had been used up, including Chiger’s. He had long since wished he’d struck a better bargain with Socha and claimed he had ‘mistakenly assumed the war would be over by the end of the year’. Having discussed the situation with Pepa, he decided he had only one course of action.

Chiger sat down with Socha and explained the situation and then went on to describe how soon after the German occupation, before he and his family were moved to the ghetto, he had hidden a small fortune in gold and jewellery – as a sort of retirement plan, ‘in case we should be lucky enough to return there after the war’. Most of the gold had been an inheritance from Paulina’s family and it was all they had in the way of real wealth. He was proposing to tell Socha the location of the gold, and ask him to retrieve it. When the idea was put to him, Socha agreed without hesitation.

Before the family was evicted from the house in Kopernica Street, opposite the cinema, Chiger had buried all their valuables beneath the floor of the cellar. Socha gave the project a great deal of thought and even brought a map of the area to help them plan their approach. According to Chiger:

After Socha and Wroblewski had left, we began to discuss the plan and many doubtful questions occupied our minds. Would they be able to find it? Would they find it and not return to us? Would they themselves be discovered digging in the cellar and so lead to our discovery? Some of the group were pessimistic and thought that I was naive for proposing such a thing to these sewer workers. For my own part, I felt I had nothing to lose …

Margulies recalled that when Socha and Wroblewski turned up at the building to investigate the cellar, they were discouraged by the concierge, who claimed not to know of any reason why the sewer authority needed to inspect her cellar. When they reported this to Chiger, Margulies chipped in with a solution: ‘Wait until Sunday. She’s Catholic, yes? When she goes to church, go to the house then. I promise, the place will be empty.’

The following day, Socha returned and presented them all with a long sad face. He shook his head and sighed. Chiger and the others knew what to expect. Then as they dropped their heads into their hands, Socha mischievously slipped his hand into his coat, and slowly removed what he had found in the cellar. His face beaming like a child’s, he handed Chiger the money and jewels. ‘Every single piece was there,’ claimed Paulina. Thoroughly vindicated, Chiger gave it back to Socha for him to change for currency. The crisis had been averted.

In November the first snowfalls settled lightly on the ground. Down in the basin, the ten survivors did what most people did as the winter months drew closer. They searched for activities to fill the time that stretched out before them. How to fill the hours, the days and weeks as news from Socha told of dramatic but painstakingly slow Russian successes in the Ukraine. Though
there was now no doubt about the eventual outcome, no one knew how long it might take.