In the Sewers of Lvov (28 page)

Though they were scattered to the four winds and all making their separate plans to emigrate to the west, they were only too soon reunited. On 12 May 1946, Socha and his daughter Stepya were out together riding their bicycles. As they peddled down a steep hill, Socha saw a Russian army truck careering madly across the road in Stepya’s path. He desperately peddled ahead, overtook his daughter and knocked her safely out of the path of the truck. Within the same instant, Socha had collided with the juggernaut and under the mangled bicycle frame, Socha’s broken body lay lifeless. ‘He had fallen over a drain in the street, and his blood flowed freely into the sewer,’ wrote Chiger.

The Chigers received the telegram the following day and took the next train. Within the week, they were all together again, to march behind Socha’s widow and child to the funeral. There were no words to describe their sadness as they gathered at Socha’s house afterwards. Chiger, his family and friends stood with Catholics and thought themselves united in grief. Then someone was heard to say from the back of the room, ‘This is God’s retribution. This is what comes of helping the Jews.’

This book was made possible by the selfless co-operation of four people. Dr Kristine Keren has been a tireless support throughout my research. Her constant encouragement and frankness made my task far easier than it might otherwise have been.

Dr Keren’s mother, Paulina Chyrowska (Chiger) has been equally generous. Her extraordinary powers of recollection were an invaluable asset. I can never properly express my gratitude for the way she worked with me, going over the most minute details again and again. I know Mrs Chyrowska found the work exhausting, it must also have been distressing – yet she was always ready to go on.

Mundek Margulies’s boundless enthusiasm seemed at times almost an act of defiance. His greatest fear was that people might not believe what had happened. Margulies is one of the bravest men I have ever met. His courage was a great source of inspiration.

Throughout Klara Margulies has been the most touching witness. Her disarming modesty, generosity and loyalty to others gave me invaluable insight. Her contribution to this book is incalculable.

I am also greatly indebted to Dr Henri Berestycki, his sister Susan Etam Berestycki and their mother Mrs Gutche Berestycki who have generously helped describe the role played by their father, Jacob. I am equally grateful to Mrs Iona Mislab for her accounts concerning her father and mother, Chaskiel Orenbach and Genia Weinberg. I would also like to thank David Lee Preston, son of Halina Wind, for his encouragement.

To the following friends and colleagues, my thanks for their kind help. David Spector whose enthusiasm for this story was its very genesis, Dr Martin Gilbert for his generous encouragement, Dr Bullen at the Imperial War Museum, Michael Fishwick and Richard Wheaton at Collins for their patience and thoroughness, Roy Davies at Timewatch for his sound advice, the staff of the Map Room at the Royal Geographical Society, Anita Lowenstein for invaluable help as a translator, along with my colleagues Jonathan Dent and Chris Mohr.

Finally, my special thanks to Clive and Bonnie Overlander for their support at a moment of crisis. No words can express …

Robert Marshall
London, February 1990

Academy of Sciences of the Ukraine SSR, Institute of State and Law,
Nazi Crimes in the Ukraine 1941–1944
(Kiev, Naukova Dumka, 1987).

Reuben Ainsztein,
Jewish Resistance in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe
(London, ELEK, 1974).

Mark Arnold-Forster,
The World at War
(London, Collins, 1973).

P. E. Baker, J. M. Eltenton, N. Hall and H. Stannard,
Chronology of the Second World War
(London, Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1947).

Nicholas Bethell,
The War Hitler Won, September 1939
(London, Penguin, 1972).

Yuri Boshyk (ed.),
Ukraine During World War II: History and Aftermath
(Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, 1986).

Norman Davies,
Heart of Europe, a Short History of Poland
(OUP, 1986).

Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol 11 (New York, Macmillan, 1972).

Martin Gilbert,
The Holocaust, the Jewish Tragedy
(London, Collins, 1986).

Martin Gilbert,
The Holocaust, Maps and Photographs
(Board of Deputies of British Jews, 1978).

Maria Hochberg-Marianska,
Children Accuse
(Jerusalem Jewish Historical Commission, 1947).

Shmuel Krakowski,
The War of the Doomed: Jewish Armed Resistance in Poland, 1942–1944
(London, Holmes and Meier, 1984).

Krushchev Remembers
, trans. and ed. by Strobe Talbott (London, Deutsch, 1971).

James Lucas,
War on the Eastern Front 1941–1945
(London, Jane’s, 1979).

Richard C. Lucas,
The Forgotten Holocaust, the Poles Under German Occupation 1939–1944
(The University Press of Kentucky, 1986).

Michael R. Marrus,
The Holocaust in History
(London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987).

Murray S. Miron and Arnold P. Goldstein,
Hostage
(London, Pergamon, 1979).

Vladimir Molchanov,
The Killers’ Whereabouts Are Known
(Moscow Novostí Press, 1986).

E. L. Quarantelli (ed.),
Disasters: theory and research
(New York, Sage, 1978).

Joachim Schoenfeld,
Holocaust Memoirs, Jews in the Lwow Ghetto, the Janowski Concentration Camp and as Deportees in Siberia
(Hoboken, KTAV, 1985).

Stefan Szende,
The Promise Hitler Kept
(London, Gollancz, 1945).

Leon Weliczker Wells,
The Death Brigade
(London, Macmillan, 1963).

Simon Willenberg,
Surviving Treblinka
(London, Basil Blackwell, 1989).

1
Drawn from
The Death Brigade
, by Leon Wells and interviews with Mundek Margulies.

2
Drawn from David Lee Preston, ‘A Bird in The Wind’,
Enquirer
magazine; (8 May 1983).

3
Virtually all material concerning Jacob Berestycki comes from a series of interviews made with his son, Prof Henri Berestycki and widow, Mrs Gutche Berestycki, in Paris during October 1989.

4
Letter from Jan Felix, 16 August 1989. He had survived the liquidation by escaping to the forests. His fair hair and blue eyes disguised his origins and enabled him to move back to the city, where he scavenged off the streets. He was about 15 years old when Lvov was liberated.

5
Leon Wells,
op cit
., p. 129.

6
Reuben Ainsztein,
Jewish Resistance in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe
, (London, ELEK, 1974) pp. 444–5.

7
Joachim Schoenfeld,
Holocaust Memoirs
(KTAV, 1985), p. 119.

8
Drawn from Leon Wells,
op. cit
., p. 130.

9
These figures have been calculated with the help of Dr Bullen at the Imperial War Museum, London; and with reference to Richard Lucas,
The Forgotten Holocaust
(University Press of Kentucky, 1986).

10
Stefan Szende,
The Promise Hitler Kept
, (London, Gollancz, 1945), p. 271.

11
Leon Wells,
op. cit
., p. 208.

12
Sigmund Heimer, BBC interview, August 1988. He escaped from the Janowska camp during an uprising in November 1944, and joined the partisans.

13
Leon Wells,
op. cit
., p. 206.

14
The Continental school of higher education, preparing pupils for university.

15
Drawn from David Lee Preston,
op. cit.

16
Krushchev Remembers
, trans. and ed. Strobe Talbott, p. 139.

17
Leon Wells,
op. cit
., pp. 267–71.

Robert Marshall divided his career between writing books and plays. He also produced arts and history programming initially for the BBC and, later, live recordings of great theatre productions for cinema release, with more than 100 credits to his name.
His writing career began with a series of radio plays, and a Play for Today ‘Before Water Lilies’ for the BBC in the 1970s. During the 1980s and 90s he scripted and directed over thirty programmes for the BBC, from documentaries to dramas including
All the King’s Men
(1988) which was optioned by Stanley Kubrick,
In the Sewers of Lvov
(1990) which was made into the feature film
In Darkness
, and
Storm From the East
(BBC 1994) which was top of the Times non-fiction best-selling list for over two months. He became Executive Producer for The Globe on Screen, at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

In the Sewers of Lvov

It was the last refuge of the desperate Jews-the warren of sewers underneath their city. Above, the Nazis implemented the destruction of their friends and relatives in a final Aktion against the ghetto in the Polish city of Lvov. A small band of Jews, however, escaped into the grim network of tunnels, there to live for fourteen months with the city’s waste, the sudden floods that washed some of them away, the fumes and the damp, the rats, the darkness, and the despair. Their only support was a sewer worker, an ex-criminal who constantly threatened to leave them if they ran out of money. Many died; some of cyanide in mass suicide, some of falling into the rushing waters of the river, some simply of exhaustion. A baby was born and then murdered almost immediately. The group quarrelled, split into factions and threatened each other at gun point. The survivors found themselves at one point, trapped in a chamber filling to the roof with storm water.

Yet survive they did, even infiltrating themselves into the camps above to find their missing relatives. When the Russians liberated Lvov, they emerged from the sewers filthy, bent double, emaciated, unrecognizable. When they opened their eyes their eye seemed blood red.

Robert Marshall, author of
All the King's Men
has written the harrowing story of the survivor’s ordeal based on a long series of interviews and a hitherto private diary, creating a blazing testimony to human faith and endurance.

For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been
removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain
references to missing images.
This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
London WC1B 3DP
First published in Great Britain 1990 by William Collins Sons & Co.
Copyright © 1990 Robert Marshall
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eISBN: 9781448210022
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