In the Sewers of Lvov (5 page)

‘When they were working on the tunnel, they placed a table over the hole in Weiss’s floor and then spread a sheet over a table so it looked like a tablecloth, draped down to the floor. Down in the cellar, they worked with spoons and forks, digging at the earth, while people sat at the table and played cards, talked or ate. If the Germans came into the room – they saw nothing.’

While the work progressed, the rhythms of the Julag continued. In the evenings, Paulina returned from her work in the Janowska camp and released her children from the bunker in the kitchen. Chiger returned from his labours a little later and she would recount ever more devastating horrors being inflicted on the women in the camp.

‘Gebauer doesn’t like women with grey hair. If he sees one grey hair, he shoots them. He is killing women every day.’

Chiger listened to these accounts and decided that if Paulina continued to work at the camp it only increased the likelihood of her being murdered. He decided she would simply have to go missing.

‘You’re not going back to the camp. You’ll stay here,’ he told her.

Paulina thought the idea just as dangerous. ‘They know I
should be up at the Janowska Road. Grzymek comes round during the day looking for people like me.’

Chiger claimed he had a new place where she and the children could hide. He told her to pack some warm clothing for living underground. Paulina took out the children’s cheap felt boots, but Kristina had recently been given a new pair of summer sandals.

‘No. Where we are going you won’t need them.’

But Kristina was adamant. The felt boots had to be packed away with everything else and they moved across to the barrack, Krisia proudly wearing her new sandals. They were led down through a hole in someone’s floor, to a space where Chiger had already set up a simple bed and some benches. While he was away at the workshop and Kuba at the paint factory, Paulina and the children sat quietly beneath Weiss’s room. Strangers came and went, taking their turn to work on the shaft and ignored the family that was camped beside them. Whether Weiss and the others saw their presence as an unnecessary risk, we do not know. Chiger was loath to leave them there for long and contrived to make regular visits, bringing tools he had taken from the workshops. By now, Chiger’s brother-in-law had also been drafted on to the project and they both took turns down the shaft.

At first, the work was daunting. They had to break through a solid concrete floor and at times it seemed that they would never do it. They could not attack the concrete with a pick or deliver a full-hearted blow on the chisel in case the noise attracted attention. So, painstakingly, they picked and chipped their way through, at first with spoons and forks, then eventually with tools from the workshop. Finally they made it through to the soft earth beneath.

Boards were brought down to shore up the sides and a cover made of another paving stone was used to disguise the entrance. They succeeded in digging an extremely narrow shaft, down to a depth of about one and a half metres – about the height of the average man. At that point their progress was abruptly halted. Beneath their feet was more solid stone. They had struck the roof of a sewer chamber.

Working in a space barely wider than a man, they chipped and scraped away at the solid limestone. They presumed they were working towards some small channel that formed part of the sewer network, but they were also aware that they might in fact be directly over the river Peltwa. Therefore, if they broke through the ceiling, might they not just fall straight into the river?

They worked on cautiously, chipping at the limestone at their feet. In fact, the stone they were trying to break up had been carefully laid into place by one of an army of masons during the 1890s. Each piece had been hewn into a shallow arc, sometimes nearly a metre long and perhaps twenty-five centimetres wide. No one could guess how thick it was. The only people who knew that had left Lvov forty years ago.

The Italian engineering company had constructed the system by damming the Peltwa while a deep tunnel was bored beneath the city. The floor of this tunnel would be more than forty feet below street level. This was then lined with stone and cement, while at the same time the roof was constructed overhead. The masons, working atop wooden scaffolding, had carved away the soil in front of them and then shouldered each massive stone into place.

It quickly became apparent to Weiss and his men that the pieces fitted together with the precision of a Roman arch. Each block had been braced against the weight of the soil above, transmitting that weight sideways through each neighbouring piece down to the floor of the chamber. Now the blocks of stone were being attacked from above – and were easily withstanding each blow. If the intruders were going to get through they would have to demolish the limestone into tiny fragments. And this is precisely what they did. Late one evening, Chiger, Berestycki and Weiss were at work, chipping away at the material until one of their blows passed straight through into space.

A moment later, the fragments clattered somewhere below, then suddenly a massive block collapsed beneath their feet and crashed with a resounding explosion on to something solid. They were through.

Up through the shaft came the odour of stale air which soon filled the cellar. There was also an ominous roar – an incessant rush of noise. It was the Peltwa. Chiger, Berestycki and Weiss were terribly excited by the breakthrough and decided, there and then, to go further.

No one recalls who was the first down the shaft, but the story was the same for all. They had to lower themselves feet first down to the stone layer at the bottom of the shaft. At that point they found the narrow aperture left by the limestone block. The first of the three squeezed his hips through and inched downwards, clinging to an outstretched hand from above. Feet flayed about until they made contact with something solid – a wall? Now braced against it, he searched with his boots for the solid floor they believed was there. Chiger recalled: ‘… the chamber caused the noise of the rushing water to be magnified. Even the smallest sound would echo through the tunnel.’ Compared with the relative quiet of the cellar, the noise in the chamber seemed almost deafening. Descending into this hopelessly dark and noisy environment of the sewer, Chiger ‘… was seized by a great sense of being lost and enveloped by a fear that caused me actually to tremble.’

The drop from the hole in the roof of the chamber to what lay below was literally a leap into the unknown. The noise of the river was so loud, it seemed right beneath their feet. The person descending had finally to let go of the arm above him and he was on his own, slipping further and further away. At the very point when his shoulders were level with the limestone lining, with very little shaft left to purchase, his feet scraped against solid
ground. One more heave downwards and he was standing securely.

Eventually all three stood together beneath the shaft. The sound of the water was now deafening. Someone stumbled to the floor, grasped a large lump of limestone that had been dislodged from the roof and hurled it out before him. It crashed into the water. With their eyes still not properly adjusted to the gloom, they slowly felt their way about until they had established that they were standing on a narrow ledge some three feet wide, beyond which, though they could not see it, was the Peltwa. Had they dipped a foot into the water they would have been shocked at the strength of the current. The water seems to pull you in even when pressed against the wall, and this is not merely an illusion. The sensation is caused by the wall which is actually a vault that arches up from the floor and across the river to the other side. Pressed against it you are forced to lean forwards, giving you the impression of being pushed towards the water.

For Chiger, those first moments in the sewer were a nightmare: ‘It was so dark we couldn’t even see each other, and the overwhelming sense of isolation paralysed us so that we could not force a single sound from our throats. It reminded me of Orpheus’s descent into Hades. Not an imagined myth, but the real Hades.’ About the only tangible fact they had absorbed was that the ledge they were on might be some form of bank – a pathway, that ran along the length of the river – but they were in no mood to explore. After only a few minutes, they knew they had had enough and they were overcome by an urge to scramble out again.

Once back in the room they were overcome with a sense of almost childish delight. Chiger stood staring down into the shaft, beaming with self-satisfaction. It had terrified them, it was in no real sense a sanctuary – but it was a start. Chiger broke the news to Paulina. Despite their terror, the three men had already resolved to return. Paulina came down to the cellar with the children to watch them go. Someone had fetched a torch and its narrow beam seemed to embolden them for the return to Hades. One by one they slid themselves through the cellar floor, out of
sight. From their light they could now easily see the Peltwa rushing at their feet. They could also just about see the far side, about eight metres across, with a mirror of the ledge they stood on. They flashed the torch up and down the length, but their light was too weak and it was smothered by darkness just a few meters from where they stood.

Nevertheless, it gradually became clear what a remarkable piece of work surrounded them. They were standing within a massive vaulted chamber, constructed from carved limestone blocks that formed a perfect semi-circle up and over the Peltwa. At its height it was perhaps five metres above the water. From bank to bank the river was six metres across and seemed to flow over a smooth bed of limestone which gradually declined away from the ledge to a depth of almost two metres.

Standing there in that vast vault of stone, they talked excitedly to each other about what they saw. They were in a completely new environment – somewhere where it was quite easy to forget the world above. With the torch held before him like a shield, Chiger began to lead them along the ledge. But almost immediately they were stopped short. A voice from behind cut through the roar of the river.

‘What are you doing here?’

The three men were suddenly rooted to the spot, illuminated by powerful lanterns. Who ever they were – and there was more than one lantern – they addressed the three in Polish.

‘I said what are you lot doing here?’

‘You’re all finished,’ said another. ‘We’ll have to tell the Gestapo.’

‘They’ve come down from the ghetto. They’re finished all right,’ said the first.

The captives stared blindly into the light of the lanterns. Weiss somehow gathered up his wits and spoke to them.

‘We dug down from a cellar, through that shaft. We’re looking for a shelter. Somewhere to hide.’

‘There’s nowhere to hide down here. Where do you think you are?’

Weiss continued, ‘We planned to find somewhere where we
could hold up, where we could stay hidden for a few weeks. Perhaps you might know somewhere? There’s no need to hand us over, just tell us where we can hide.’

‘You know there’s no escape out of these sewers.’ It was a third voice. There were three of them. He stepped forward and allowed himself to be illuminated by the lanterns.

Chiger spoke now. ‘Of course, we understand that. We had not planned to escape, but to hide. That’s what we meant. There must be some pipe or hole down here where we can sit, sleep, cook.’

‘Cook food?’ They began to laugh.

‘We won’t do any harm, we just want to save ourselves and our friends,’ said Jacob.

‘How many of you are there?’ asked the illuminated one.

‘Perhaps less than ten,’ said Chiger.

‘Ten?’

‘How did you say you got down here?’

‘We dug the shaft from the cellar, under my house. It’s right above us.’

‘Through the stone and concrete?’

‘Slowly, we did it. Yes.’

‘You know, we heard you. For the past day or so, we’ve been hearing digging in this area and so we came to investigate. We’re with the sewer authority. It’s our job to be down here. We do maintenance. Anyway we heard the digging so we came to investigate. We had trouble trying to locate exactly where the noises were coming from, but when we heard you breaking through you were easy to find.’

There was something oddly easy-going about this man. He spoke without menace, with a hint of good humour. The immediate threat seemed to have gone.

‘I’m impressed by your ingenuity. Show me where you’ve come from. I want to see for myself.’

Weiss took Chiger’s arm to stop him, but he was shrugged off.

‘What can he do up there that he can’t do from down here? We have no choice,’ Chiger explained.

The sewer men also held a conference. The first two were not
impressed by the jovial one’s curiosity. He pointed to the hole in the chamber roof.

‘This is awful. This is so unprofessional. How do you expect people to crawl through that?’

‘We’re not professional miners,’ said Chiger. ‘We don’t know how to do this kind of work.’

The man laughed and then struggled up into the shaft. Chiger and the others watched him disappearing towards the cellar and could do nothing to stop him. When he had wriggled his head and shoulders clear of the cellar floor, he paused and gazed around the room – and eventually upon Paulina and her children.

It was a momentous, decisive instant shared between Paulina and the stranger. As their eyes met they each seemed to ask a question – tacitly enquiring if the other could be trusted. ‘Suddenly, up popped this face – not my husband’s, but a complete stranger’s. I immediately took hold of Pawel and Krisia and hugged them to me.’ For Paulina, the moment seemed to last forever. She hugged Krisia and Pawel, all that was most precious, and waited. Suddenly, his face exploded into a magnificent smile and the tension dissolved.

He hauled himself up into the low cellar and nodded politely to the woman with her arms around her children. He was followed by Chiger, Berestycki and Weiss. By the time the other sewer workers had arrived the little space was quite crowded. Chiger introduced his wife and explained to her the scene that had taken place down below. Paulina remained unmoved, her arms shielding her two children from this extraordinary intrusion. Who were these strangers that had emerged from the sewers?