In the Sewers of Lvov (25 page)

Most of the group put their escape largely down to luck. But for some, the experience left an indelible mark. Their attempts to survive seemed to have been now crowned with a mystical quality, a sense that somehow it all had some purpose and meaning.

Another legacy of the flood was the psychological effect it had on a number of lives. Mrs Weinberg recounted many times that it had been the worst moment of the entire ordeal and that she had nightmares about it long afterwards. Kristina also admitted that she had never been so terrified. From that day forward, she found herself unconsciously listening to the sounds that drifted down from the street and the slightest hint of rain would send her almost hysterical with fear.

‘Don’t let it rain!’ she would cry. ‘Don’t let it rain.’

Along with the warmer weather came further Soviet victories. In mid-March the Ukrainian armies to the south of Lvov had recaptured Odessa on the Black Sea and cut the Odessa-Lvov railway, while to the north, the Bug river, the new border between the Soviet Union and Poland, had been crossed at three places. By the beginning of April, Soviet armies to the south-west of Lvov had crossed the Romanian and Czechoslavakian borders. Due east of Lvov, along the line to Kiev, a great battle was being waged for the town of Tarnopol.

Chiger recorded that Socha gave them daily reports of the battle. On 15 April it was announced that Tarnopol had finally fallen to the Soviets. Their liberators were now less than 130 kilometres away. ‘We were frantic with joy to hear the news,’ wrote Chiger.

But the story of Tarnopol is a tragic one. Soon after the city had been liberated, a number of Jews who had been in hiding, emerged from their sanctuaries. Over the following weeks the Germans launched counter-attacks and the city fell once more to
the invader. All those who had come out of hiding were rounded up and executed. A similar fate was meted out to the Polish families who had hidden those hapless souls during the last months of the occupation. Chiger wrote: ‘When this news reached us I had such a nervous shock that I stopped believing in our eventual rescue. We were all affected badly by this bitter news.’ By the end of the month the town was again in Russian hands, but it was now too late for celebrations.

During this time of deep depression, Berestycki delivered a ray of hope. According to the Berestycki account, ‘It was at a time when we were so racked with pain we could barely move and we were all quite desperate.’ Berestycki awoke one morning and told everyone he had a dream. ‘It was a very important dream,’ he said. ‘Jacob’s Dream’, as it has come to be known, is one of the most precious incidents that has survived. To Berestycki himself it had a powerful spiritual, almost mystical quality. While others might not have shared his conviction, no one disputes what happened.

‘I dreamt of a Rabbi last night,’ Berestycki told them. ‘An old Hasidic Rabbi I knew in Lodz. He had a small
schtiebul
[a room in a house used for prayer, as opposed to a synagogue] where my father and I used to go for prayer. He was very elderly and so I used to visit him and his wife each day, and bathe his wife’s feet. Because I took such good care of them, the rabbi told me one day: “Jacob, you are blessed. In the hard times to come, you, your children and your children’s children will escape the terror.”

‘Then, one day in 1938 he made a speech at the
schtiebul
during the High Holidays. It was about a year before the war broke out. The Rabbi said: “So, you are dressed up for the High Holidays. But if you knew what was coming, you would dress for a
schivah
[mourning], fast and pray for deliverance.”

‘The old Rabbi died that year – and, of course, he had been right. Well, I dreamt of him last night and in the dream he came to deliver a message. In my dream he said to me: “I have come to tell you that I have fulfilled my promise. You remember my blessing. You should know that you will be free on a particular day.” He told me a day in the Hebrew calendar. I told him that I
had lost track of the Hebrew calendar, but I knew what day it was in the secular calendar. So he told me the date in the secular calendar.’

Chiger wrote that Berestycki’s words were ‘astonishing’ and that his dream ‘was like an omen’. In his version, he said that Jacob asked if anyone had a birthday in July. Paulina said that her birthday was on the twenty-third. ‘That is the day we will be free. Twenty-third of July.’

There are no accounts from any of the survivors of what thoughts they had on the night of 30 May – the anniversary of the start of their ordeal in the sewers. It appears that the collective memory had lost any grasp of time since the beginning of spring. Their physical and mental states, which had been deteriorating steadily, were made worse by the growing tension over when they would finally be liberated. The reports of Soviet successes became more piecemeal, especially during May when there was something of a hiatus on the Ukrainian front. The situation must have seemed desperately frustrating at times, as the Soviets had advanced past Lvov south of the Carpathian mountains and to the north, across the Bug river. It appeared that Lvov had been forgotten and news of the Western Allies landing on the French coast on 6 June would have been small comfort when so many other liberating armies seemed so close at hand.

In fact the Soviets did not begin their campaign to capture the city until well into June, though the Germans had been preparing their defences since April. Despite the deteriorating military situation, anti-Jewish policies were not altered at all. Leon Wells records in
The Death Brigade
that as late as May 1944 a Polish woman, having been betrayed by her daughter as one who had sheltered Jews, was hanged and the dozen or so people she had hidden shot.

In other respects, however, life in the city had deteriorated. People were subjected to sudden curfews, even greater shortages of food and ever more ruthless intolerance of civil disobedience. This meant Socha’s deliveries became more irregular and this also increased anxieties amongst the ten. To compensate he brought
reserve supplies of ersatz coffee, sugar, barley and lentils to them.

Then, towards the end of June, Socha brought them something quite astonishing. He arrived one morning to deliver the bread, crawled out of the Seventy with Wroblewski and was followed by someone else. A total stranger.

‘This is Tola,’ Socha announced.

The group stood staring in disbelief. They had not been given any warning that he would be bringing a stranger, but worse was to follow.

‘Tola will by staying with you,’ Socha explained.

Chiger was incredulous and demanded an explanation. According to Socha, Tola was a Russian soldier who’d been wounded and captured by the Germans. He’d been transported to Lvov to be hospitalized. Once recovered, he was due to be sent to Germany where he would join the ranks of hundreds of thousands of Russian ‘slaves’ labouring in German factories. However, while in the hospital, Tola had developed an attachment to a nurse named Michalina, who was Socha’s sister-in-law. The romance had developed and Michalina had pleaded with Socha to save her Russian lover from deportation. Socha had been persuaded and agreed to hide young Tola until the city was liberated. Where better than in the storm basin beneath Bernadinski Square? There was little any of them could do about Tola’s presence. He was there for the duration.

For the first few days, Tola was content with having been given refuge. He kept to himself in the corner and avoided any unnecessary contact. He was terrified by the rats and never came to terms with them or the general level of filth that had to be endured. As for the ten, having recovered from the shock of his presence, they were pleased to see a new face. They relished describing how they had survived for more than a year beneath the streets. But their accounts of the hardships and distress began to play on Tola’s spirits. They spoke with such resignation, mixed with intense frustration, that the poor Russian soon plunged into depression, ‘paralysing his spirit’. Despite the occasional visits from Socha and messages from Michalina, he could not be stirred from his torpor.

This new aspect had a disquieting effect on the closely knit group. Tola’s novelty value had worn off; his sullen presence soon became resented and they made certain he was under no illusions about that. The whole situation disintegrated as Tola became restless, pacing back and forth and declaring that he’d had enough.

‘How can you sit here day after day? How can you survive with the two children? This is impossible. I cannot do it.’ He told them he was going to escape.

When Socha returned the following day, Chiger and Margulies told him of this and described the fear this intruder had generated within the group.

‘If he left he would surely be captured, interrogated and made to confess everything; how he had escaped, who gave him shelter, where he had been hiding and with whom. It would be a catastrophe.’

Socha agreed that if Tola were to escape he’d bring disaster on all of them. He brought them a pistol and left it in Chiger’s charge to be used on Tola if necessary. It wasn’t long before there was a confrontation. One day, while everyone was otherwise preoccupied, Tola made a grab for freedom and dived towards the Seventy. Margulies followed him with his own pistol drawn. Halfway down the pipe, Korsarz got hold of the Russian and pressed the muzzle of the pistol into his ribs.

‘If you move any further down the pipe I’ll kill you,’ Margulies told him. He later recalled the Russian’s desparation: ‘Tola shouted that he needed to get out, to get some fresh air. I told him, “You can’t escape. We won’t let you. If you go out you’ll get arrested.”’

Tola protested, ‘I won’t tell them anything. You can trust me.’

‘We can’t trust anyone. Believe me, if you get caught, you’ll talk. There’s no such thing as silence. We can’t let you go, you are with us now, till the end.’

Unconvinced, Tola tested Margulies’s resolve and moved further down the pipe. Then he heard the hammer on the revolver being cocked … The two of them shuffled back down the pipe, to the chamber.

Tola was now effectively a prisoner. He was watched twenty-four hours a day, each of the men taking it in turns to hold the revolver. At times, when the Russian became restive and showed signs of panic, he was tied up and even force fed. There was by now a steely resolve that had suffused them all, a kind of defiant ruthlessness. Anyone who threatened their liberation now could expect no mercy.

Within a week, Tola had become resigned to his confinement and they no longer found it necessary to tie him up. Though his bouts of panic had ceased, he was never trusted sufficiently for them to be able to do away with the guard duty. However, in this new atmosphere, the Russian began to open up a little and to describe what he knew of the campaign against the Germans. With one remark he completely transformed the relationship and inspired them all with renewed hope.

‘The Red Army is so close, it cannot help but occupy the city. We will take it, building by building, like we did in Tarnopol.’ But in the telling of it, Tola betrayed a secret he had kept from everyone. He had not been captured, he was a deserter. Having been wounded he had left his unit and actually given himself up to the Germans. When the Russians finally took the city, as they surely would, his life would be worth less than if he was in German hands. If he was caught the best he might expect would be transportation to Siberia. More likely, it would be the firing squad. Again he plunged into a desperate depression, his miserable rantings filled everyone with loathing. Their only distraction was trying to imagine the events that were taking place above their heads.

Since the beginning of July, they had heard the Germans constructing their defences in the streets. Socha reported that great preparations were being carried out in the suburbs, that buildings were being commandeered and that reinforcements were arriving from the west. By the end of the first week of July they could hear from the sewers the sound of the Soviet artillery shelling the suburbs. The shelling gradually became louder, and was coupled with the sound of heavy machine-gun fire. At times they could hear the rhythmic crunch of boots across the cobbles and the
barked orders of the officers. This rising level of activity and drama on the street above generated almost delirious excitement. When the explosions were at their most intense, the ground shook beneath them and they were instantly swept with waves of fright. The men, almost overcome with curiosity, decided to throw caution to the wind and sally forth to reconnoitre. They were about to do something which, just a few days before, they would have regarded as suicidal. Clearly, the adrenaline level was high, for they were barely conscious of the risk.

Led by Margulies, they shuffled down the Seventy and into the adjacent storm pipe which led up to the main square, where they collected water. Like most storm pipes, these were accessible from the street through manholes every hundred metres or so.

As they worked their way forward on their elbows, the leader was able to make out the increasingly bright rays of sunlight from above. Immediately above this was a narrow vertical shaft, in the walls of which were embedded a set of steel rungs. Cracks of daylight could be seen from around the edge of the manhole cover. Having climbed to the top of the ladder, they then had to heave up the steel cover, some three centimetres thick, and slip a stone in place to hold it open. Then each one took it in turns to climb the ladder and peer out into the street. They were in the very centre of Bernadinski Square. Though Chiger’s sight was failing him, he strained to bring his little chink of the world into focus: ‘I finally recognized the monastery and Bernadinski Church that was attached. I even saw a monk working in his vegetable patch.’ That narrow glimpse was the first Chiger had seen of the outside world in over thirteen months. ‘The fighting was so close I could hear individual shots and the rumble of tanks. We even heard the officers yelling orders about setting mines in the streets,’ he recalled.

Each in his turn climbed the ladder and peered across the field of cobbles at the world that had been, for most of them, just a memory. Finally, Margulies led the way back: ‘We replaced the cover and went back to the women and children, both frightened and heartened because the fighting was so near.’