In the Sewers of Lvov (26 page)

That brief glimpse of the street and the activity upon it, though
welcome, had the effect of restoring their watchfulness. They were all left with the impression that they were much closer to the surface than they had previously imagined. When they returned to the basin they encouraged everyone to speak only in whispers and move about with the least amount of noise. This new regime helped to heighten the tension.

Some time during early July (Chiger places it in June), they were all roused by the distant sound of digging. It seemed to be some way above their heads. They listened in silence to the regular chipping of pick axes and the soft scrape of shovels. The following day they heard the same sound again, perhaps a little louder. When Socha and Wroblewski turned up Chiger hushed everyone and asked the sewer workers to listen. There was no doubt, they were digging up the road right above their heads. Perhaps they had been discovered and the Germans were digging their way down to get them.

Socha dismissed this but left immediately with Wroblewski to investigate. Collecting Kowalow along the way, they marched down to Bernadinski Square. ‘The Germans were digging tank traps and laying mines beneath the cobbles.’ wrote Chiger. There was no doubt about it, they were digging right above the catch basin.

Down below, they were in no mood just to sit and await the outcome. The sound had become so loud that it seemed as though they might break through at any moment. Margulies had reached the same state of desperation as everyone else: ‘I was certain, this was the moment. Now we are finished.’

In the meantime, the people around him seemed to have been seized by an idea. They grabbed the shovel and whatever else they could find and began shovelling earth and the used carbide that had been dumped in a corner. They imagined that if they could fill up the section of the chamber immediately beneath where the Germans seemed to be digging, then nothing but further soil would be discovered. Once again panic was in the air. They hurled themselves at the task, perhaps knowing as they did so that there was little chance of shifting enough dirt in time. ‘It would
never have worked, but we were desperate,’ Margulies recalled.

While this frantic activity took place below, Socha, Wroblewski and Kowalow had approached the officer in charge of the digging operation. Socha later told Chiger, ‘Seeing the mines being laid, right above your heads, there was nothing for it. We began to argue with the Germans.’

Kowalow, summoning all the authority his overalls and boots could conjure, confronted the officer. ‘There are gas pipes right beneath your feet! If you continue to dig you will rupture the pipes.’

Naturally, the Germans were angered by this interference. The buildings in the area were occupied by various military departments and had to be defended from the expected tanks and infantry. Yet here was a confrontation of two authorities. The might of the aristocratic Wehrmacht, setting about its business, confronted by the solid, matter-of-fact, plebeian self-confidence of the municipal sewer authority. According to Chiger the argument in the street attracted the attention of some of the officers and men in the adjacent houses, who came out to enquire about the hold up: ‘They were furious that the defence precautions were being threatened by these men in overalls.’ Soon the street was filled with men eager to impress their opinions on each other, while behind them, a squad of privates took the opportunity to lean on their shovels and have a smoke.

Kowalow and Socha spoke with impressive authority. If the Germans continued they faced ominous consequences.

‘If you rupture the pipes, you will blow yourself, your men and all these buildings to pieces. The whole street will go up.’

There was no contest. Reluctantly, the order was given to cease the operation and the soldiers shouldered their shovels. Beneath the street, Chiger and the others felt fearfully helpless. Both Margulies and Chiger claimed this was the most dangerous moment, ‘… utterly beyond our control,’ though they reflected upon it with widely differing philosophies.

For Margulies it was further testament of Socha’s resourcefulness and persuasive authority: ‘He was such a clever fellow. He did this and that’s why they stopped digging. They left twelve
mines all wired together.’ For Chiger, it was the hand of Providence. ‘No wonder Socha believed, now more than ever, that he had been chosen to save us.’

Throughout this incident and the days that followed, their thoughts and conversations were underscored by the incessant heavy thud of an artillery barrage. Klara recalled taking the children down the Seventy and going for walks through the larger pipes that criss-crossed the system: ‘Every so often we would hear a loud bang and feel the vibrations through the ground.’

Then, somewhere in the midst of all this activity, around the third week of July, Socha failed to turn up with the bread. After the third day without sight of him or Wroblewski they became worried and were preoccupied with explanations for his absence. Perhaps the Germans had brought down a total curfew, the city was about to be razed to the ground prior to their retreat – just as they had done in Kiev. Meanwhile Tola ‘… began to rave like a madman and we feared he’d completely lose his mind through frantic despair,’ wrote Chiger.

At this point others were becoming concerned about Chiger’s own emotional state. He lashed out angrily at his wife and anyone else who questioned his authority. In his own account Chiger admits that he had reached a state of ‘… almost complete physical and nervous exhaustion’, cut off from Socha he felt abandoned while great unknown events were being played out above.

During lulls in the fighting, Margulies stood with his ear pressed to the ceiling, listening for voices. He strained to hear the language that was spoken.

‘Chiger, listen here. Listen to these voices. It’s Russian!’

But there was something wrong. He could hear a mixture of tongues, perhaps Mongolian, perhaps some of the Muslim tongues from the central states of the Union.

‘These are not the proper Russians, these are deserters,’ Margulies said after some thought. Chiger became furious. ‘I tell you the Russians are not there yet,’ Margulies insisted.

The fourth day passed and still there was no sign of Socha. Chiger became obsessed with what had happened in Tarnopol.
There developed a curious tension, something between growing excitement at the prospect of returning to the street, coupled with fear of the unknown.

It was perhaps an indication of his inner turmoil that at this point in Chiger’s account his recollection seems to have failed him. He described an incident when ‘Korsarz and Chaskiel went out for a few days’, explaining that they took ‘… great care not to be seen by the Germans’. He went on: ‘It was a sign that restrictions on the street were lessening. Our spirits were lifted by their reports and we began to believe that we would be saved.’

According to Margulies, however, no such ‘excursions’ took place. Neither he nor Chaskiel had made further trips to the street since October: ‘We could barely get Chaskiel to take his turn to go for water any more. Besides, it was too dangerous.’

Indeed it was. The fifth day of their solitude, the 23 July, was Paulina’s birthday. Like a surprise birthday present, they heard the familiar shuffle coming down the Seventy. Through the aperture emerged Wroblewski. He had come, partly to reassure them they had not been abandoned, but mostly to shelter from the fighting that was still raging above. The building he lived in had been hit and there was heavy fighting throughout his neighbourhood. The sewers seemed to be the only place to hide. Over the next few days, the sounds of fighting became more intermittent and eventually they ceased. It was over.

Some five days after his last visit, Socha finally arrived. He described what had been happening. The Germans, who had been all but surrounded, had decided not to fight for each and every building but instead retreated quietly one night leaving the city largely undamaged. There were pockets of resistance still, small garrisons that had been left behind to fight suicidal rearguard actions. Most of these were Ukrainian units, or White Russians who had fought in German uniforms. Nevertheless, the Red Army was now in occupation of Lvov.

Yet it was still not safe. In the buildings and alleyways, those small pockets of Ukrainian guerrilla units were holding out. Though they would eventually be flushed out, in the meantime they were conducting a campaign of murder against those who
might bear witness to their co-operation with the Germans. Poles and Jews who had emerged from hiding were being picked off in the street. Socha claimed it would be a few days yet. Again, the spectre of Tarnopol rose before them. ‘On the night of the twenty-sixth it was my turn to stand watch over Tola,’ Chiger described in his account.

He was handed the revolver and took up his duty. While Tola was awake ‘… he had remained frantic and agitated by the sounds of Russian soldiers.’ Despite the quiet from the street, Chiger still remained on edge. The following morning, Margulies rose from his bed and set off to fetch the day’s water. One after the other, they all rose and began to tidy away the bedding material. Mrs Weinberg began to make coffee while someone else shifted the boards away to convert the beds into benches. Margulies returned within the hour with the water and began to shave. Chiger passed the revolver to Margulies.

‘Your turn, Korsarz,’ he said and crawled over to a bench to catch up on his sleep. The routine proceeded as it had done for fourteen months, until suddenly there was a loud banging on the grate above the inlet pipe.

‘Korsarz! Chiger! Wake up!’

The voice, Socha’s, came from out in the street.

‘You’re coming out.’

Margulies put down his razor and shuffled over to the pipe.

‘What?’

‘You can come out. Go to the nearest manhole, I’ll be waiting there.’

Margulies didn’t need any further encouragement. He told them he would be back soon and then almost dived into the Seventy and began elbowing his way towards the other end.

Chiger, sound asleep, hadn’t heard a word. The others were at first frozen with disbelief. Margulies had gone so quickly they hardly had time to absorb what was happening.

‘We’re going out?’ Klara enquired, disbelievingly.

Margulies found his way down a storm pipe towards a brilliant beam of light that flooded the pipe from above. Though Socha’s voice echoed down through the sunlight, Margulies could see
nothing in the glare. Blindly, he climbed the rungs up the wall of the shaft and, with Socha’s steadying hand, stumbled into the street.

For the first time, Socha could see the man in the daylight and was shocked at the deep yellow pallor of his skin. He was jaundiced. Margulies’s eyes stung with the intensity of the glare. Later he remembered nothing of the scene, except the colour. Everything seemed bathed in blood. Socha took him and led him into the gloomy hall of an apartment block. His eyes began to re-focus, though everything still seemed bathed in a curious blood-red colour.

Margulies followed Socha to a rear door that led into the courtyard. In the ground there were two manholes, the tunnels from which led back into the storm pipes.

As Socha heaved against the covers, the caretaker came out to see what was happening.

‘What is this. Jesus and Mary! Where have you come from?’

‘Shhhh!’ whispered Margulies.

She stood there, stunned by this apparition in her courtyard, but she was clearly not going to get any explanation. Socha explained to Margulies what he must do. Follow the pipe that led from the manhole, it would lead him to the storm pipe and then to the chamber. ‘Lead them out to here. It’s better than the street because they’ll have more shelter.’

Margulies might have assumed he meant from the daylight, but in fact Socha was concerned about the sporadic shooting that still echoed up and down the narrow streets. Taking another look at the world, Margulies slipped down the manhole into a small brick-lined chamber, no more than thirty centimetres beneath the floor of the courtyard. He was amongst the foundations of the building. Two pipes led away from him, one that led under the hall, towards the street, and another, at right-angles under the building, towards the Bernadinski Church. That was the direction Socha had indicated. The pipe, a Forty, continued for about fifteen metres then suddenly dipped and ran downhill for a couple of metres, before levelling out and connecting with a storm pipe. The pipe was so narrow and the going so difficult that
he could feel the skin being scraped from his elbows and knees. He returned to the catch basin to find everyone assembled before him.

‘It’s true. We’re all coming out!’ Paulina recalled Margulies’s words: ‘Pepa and the children first, then the rest of the women. Halina, Klara, Mrs Weinberg. Then Tola, Chaskiel, Berestycki and the last one, the captain of the ship, Chiger.’

They took nothing with them. They simply dropped what they had in their hands and moved to the entrance of the Seventy. Chiger completed scribbling something on a scrap of newspaper, folded it up tightly and wedged it into a crack in the chamber wall. The kerosine stove was turned off, the light of the carbide lamp doused. One by one, they crawled down the Seventy, following Korsarz’s lead. They squeezed into the Forty and followed it, with great difficulty, up the incline towards a growing blaze of light. With every bend in the pipe, the light would disappear and then appear again. Eventually they were all crouched amongst the red brick walls of the building’s foundations, penetrated by a sharp and painful glare from above. Margulies guided each one towards the manhole, where Socha stood ready to haul them out.

In the courtyard a small crowd had gathered around the opening, and above their heads, staring from the balconies and doorways of the apartments, further spectators craned to catch a view. Russian soldiers too had arrived to investigate the commotion. To the collective sounds of a mixture of horror and amazement, Socha reached down into the hole and pulled out a dark-coloured, filthy creature. An emaciated, foul-smelling, crooked hag; her back hunched over, her hands covering her face from the glare. Behind her, another: smaller, a child, a girl. Again the back doubled over. Blind. Clothes dark with grime. Then another child: smaller still, a boy, with a look of utter terror on his face.