The Girl in the Green Sweater (15 page)

I will never forget the panic I felt that night when we finally descended into the sewer. It was a panic shared among the surviving Jews who must have known this was their final hour.
Our
final hour. Throughout the ghetto, there was a pandemonium of the kind I have never experienced since. People running for their lives, screaming for their loved ones, fleeing in terror. It was something no child should have to experience, this measure of alarm, and the most unsettling piece was that we had all known something like this was coming. It was in the air and all around. And yet when the moment was upon us, it was as if it had come from nowhere.
We were prepared and unprepared both, and while we were in its middle there seemed no end to it.

In the quiet just after the absurd concert in the gymnasium, the Ju-Lag had been quickly surrounded by SS, Gestapo, and Ukrainian militia. Perhaps the music had had the desired effect, because many of the Jews in the ghetto were caught off guard. SS Obersturmführer Grzymek had ordered heavy trucks to be driven into the camp, to transport the people who were to be rounded up for execution. We had seen these trucks before, but never so many, all at once. The noise of the trucks outside the thin wooden walls of our barracks was sickening, not only because of the noise itself, but because of what the noise represented. The previous actions had all been terrible, but this final action was terrible and more. There were not so many Jews left in Lvov to begin with, and here the Germans were out with a show of force that seemed to have us substantially outnumbered. There were more of them than there were of us, it seemed, and they also had guns and grenades and leather crops and other weapons to use against us. It was an excessive display, a brutality on top of a brutality. Everyone was running, pushing, crying. It is a wonder that my parents were able to hold on to us children, let alone keep us safe and whole.

I still had no precise idea where we were going. I held my father’s hand as he led me to the small basement alcove where he had done his digging, and then I watched as he began to slither into the small hole he and the other men had dug into the floor. Someone held a lantern to light our tiny space, but there was barely enough light for me to recognize all the people. I could see my uncle Kuba. I could see my grandfather, my
dziadziu
. I could see Berestycki. I could see Korsarz, the Pirate. Weiss and his fellows, I could not make out in the commotion. Already, I had decided that I did not
like these men. The others who had come and gone from Weiss’s basement to discuss these secret plans, I could not say for certain which of these people I saw on this night. My goodness, there were so many people. More than I had ever seen in this particular barracks. Some I had never seen before. There was Weiss’s wife and mother and daughter. Apparently, he meant to escape with his entire family. And there were others who were drawn to the sewer as a means of escape. They had thought of this on their own, without any help from my father’s organized group, without any digging or preparations or protection from Leopold Socha and his sewer worker colleagues. For us, it was a calculated plan; for the others, it was a last resort, a shared desperate measure.

I was confused for a moment when my father disappeared through the hole in the basement floor, into a shaft about seven meters in length, and down to the floor of the sewer. I could not see him in the darkness below, so I called out to him. He called back to me. His voice sounded so near, near enough to touch, but I could not see him. He was urging me to follow him, but I could not. I was frozen with fear. I was with my mother and brother. Korsarz was trying to gently push me through the hole to the chamber below, but I was pushing right back, maybe not so gently. He was encouraging more than pushing, but I was resisting with all of my strength. I did not want to go. I did not like that I could not see what was at the bottom of the shaft. I did not like all the noise and confusion. I did not like being pressed together with so many people. My father was trying to be encouraging, trying to ease my concern, but there were so many people yelling at me in the basement, telling me I was taking too long, that I was holding up the line, that all I could do was stand there.

I was not the only one unwilling to go into the sewer. Weiss’s wife and daughter also would not go. They realized where they were going and what misery awaited them there and refused to descend through the hole the men had dug. Weiss went anyway, leaving behind his wife and daughter. This was something my father could never understand; it would color his thinking about Weiss for the rest of their time together, that he would abandon his family in such a circumstance.

Meanwhile, Korsarz kept up with his pushing, a little less gently with each moment that passed. My mother was trying to be patient, but she quickly ran out of patience. It could not have been easy for any of them, this escape, and I was certainly not making it any easier, until finally I dropped to the cement floor and dangled my legs through the hole. I was only seven years old and fairly slight of build, and I could see that it would not be easy even for me to fit my way through the small, jagged opening.

I went first, followed by my brother and then my mother. My father reached up to grab my legs, and I made a small leap into his arms. Then he set me down on the muddy ground at my feet and turned to grab little Pawel. Someone held a small lantern, but still I could not see very well. I held fast to my father’s coat as he reached to collect my brother and then my mother. I did not want to lose him—it would have been too easy to be separated in all the excitement. I was crying, screaming. Pawel was crying, screaming. If I listened carefully, I could make out the cries of other children. This surprised me. I had thought Pawel and I were the only children left in the ghetto, because it had been so long since I had seen another child, but these voices were unmistakable to me. I heard them crying, screaming, and wondered where they had been hiding.

Probably this happened in just seconds, this climbing through our basement floor to the sewer below, but it was an agonizing few moments. There was my hesitancy, and the refusal of Weiss’s wife and daughter, and then everything happened quickly. The people kept coming through the small opening into the sewer, but also they kept coming through other manhole openings on the street. They did not care about disappearing undetected through some secret shaft. All they wanted was to disappear, and they were quickly spilling into the pipes and tunnels of the sewer, like rushing water. The Germans knew that people would seek asylum in the sewers, so they ordered the Ukrainian militia to throw grenades through the manhole openings. Up and down the streets of the ghetto, the Ukrainians were prying open the manholes and dropping grenades into the sewer below, setting off a series of explosions that surely left dozens of Jews dead.

The noise of the explosions. The darkness. The scary noise of the rushing water. The terrified screams of so many desperate people confined into such a desperately small space. The echo. It was beyond imagining. And just then, at seven years old, clutching tightly to my father’s coat, I could not comprehend it. What would make such a noise? I wondered. What was happening?

Somehow, through the darkness, my father managed to move along the ledge of the main canal, which was directly alongside the opening he had dug through Weiss’s basement. This was even more terrifying because of the enormous sounds of the rushing Peltew. It was like Niagara Falls, the way the noise bounced from the pipes and reverberated in the echo. A horrifying clamor! Oh, I was so scared! It could have been anything, this noise: a hundred rushing trains, a thousand waterfalls, a squadron of German fighter planes . . . My father had been along this main canal several times already, so he knew
what we would find, what we would hear, but he did not tell me or my brother what to expect.

I remember the hard edges of the stone wall along the ledge above the Peltew. The ledge was narrow and slippery, and I pressed as close to that wall as I could. At one point, my uncle Kuba lost his footing and fell into the water. My father lunged to save him, and when he did he lost the small knapsack he was carrying with some of our possessions. Probably this was the knapsack with my boots, because I did not see my boots after this and I was left only with my sandals. My father did manage to rescue Kuba, however, so it was a good trade. We counted ourselves lucky yet again, because all around us people were slipping and falling into the water and they were not being rescued. The currents were swallowing them up.

My father walked in front of me, holding my hand. My mother was behind me, holding my brother’s hand. I kept asking, “Where are we going? How much longer?”

My father kept answering, “A little bit longer, Krzysha. A little bit longer.”

At one point, I was moving so slowly that my father lifted me up and put me on his shoulders, which must have been very difficult for him to do as he shuffled side to side above the river. I do not know how long we walked in this way. Maybe for ten or fifteen minutes, but it seemed like hours. Finally, we came to a bridge, which led to the other side of the river, where my father and the other men had prepared our special hiding place. Unfortunately, there were so many people in the sewer that we could not safely cross the bridge to our own haven. It was at this point that we lost contact with my grandfather. My mother, she was so upset when she realized
Dziadziu
was no longer with us, but probably she
thought we had just been momentarily separated and he would meet up with us later.

There was such a surge of people, such a rush of activity and tumult. My father must have considered our circumstance and recognized that if we headed for our underground hideaway, we would have been followed by a mob of desperate people. We would have all been trampled! Or we would make such a noise that our voices and clambering would be heard on the street above. Either way we would have been doomed, so we kept walking. Probably my father was thinking we could double back once the surge of people had dispersed deeper into the sewer. Still the people kept screaming and crying, and still we kept walking, right past the hiding place my father and the others had worked so diligently to prepare.

My father had not expected such a crowd. He realized later that so many people in the Ju-Lag had known his reputation for building shelters and hiding places that they were sticking to him and his family in the sewer. Probably they were thinking, Wherever Ignacy Chiger is going, that is where I am going.

We stopped at another bridge that led to another network of tunnels and pipes. It was not so much a bridge as a few loose planks spread across an open span. Once again, I froze briefly. There was nothing to hold on to, no railings or stone wall for support, and the planks seemed so unsteady that I worried they might snap. They had been left behind by some sewer workers and had been crossed countless times by men who undoubtedly weighed four times as much as me, but I did not trust those planks. It was only a few meters across, but I could not get myself to cross until finally my father took my hand and began to pull me along. He did not wait for me to gather my resolve, as before. There was no time for resolve.

Somehow we managed to separate from the rest of the people.
My father turned us one way while the others continued on, and in this way we came upon another small chamber, along with Jacob Berestycki and Uncle Kuba. There was about a foot of raw sewage at our feet. It was the worst place imaginable. The smell! The spiderwebs! You could not move an inch without getting caught in a giant web. Also, it was terribly cold. It was spring already, but in this part of the sewer it was like winter. My mother could not understand what my father meant for us to do in such a place. To sit? To wait? For what? And she was so upset about losing my grandfather. She knew he would never find us in this secret place. She was very nervous, very unhappy. For a moment, it was like the small breakdowns she used to have when we were living at Zamarstynowska 120. Soon, she would develop the strength and will that would help us survive our underground ordeal, but for these first few moments she was very tense, very worried.

During the weeks of preparation, my father had most likely told my mother that the men were cleaning a bunker where we could hide for an extended period. She understood that the bunker was to be in the sewer, but she did not fully make the connection to what this might mean. Or maybe she did and was persuaded that this was the last sanctuary available to us. In any case, the prepared bunker would have been a four-star hotel compared with this small, dreadful place. It would have been swept clean, at least. It would have been somewhat habitable. There would have been something to eat, someplace to sit and rest, some heavy blankets to keep us warm. My father and the other men were counting us lucky for stumbling upon this terrible place, for separating ourselves from the pack of people, but my mother was afraid to move or sit down or stay in this place any longer than absolutely necessary. Pawel and I, we did not complain like my mother, but we did
not like it, either. Everywhere you looked, there were rats underfoot. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe. And worms—a thick, slimy layer of worms, worms of all sizes, covering the walls, the rocks, the mud. Too many worms to count. It was worse than our worst nightmare, and we were inside of it.

We were in this place only a few short moments when we heard a cry that seemed to be coming from the main canal. Kuba and Berestycki went immediately to investigate. We did not want to give up our privacy and once again be tossed about with the rest of the crowd, but the men could not let this scream go unchecked. It was different from the other cries. It was the cry of someone in pain. After they left, it was very quiet in our small chamber. The four of us—me, my brother, my mother, and my father—were afraid to move. We did not want to touch anything. There was no place to sit. There was nothing to say. And so we stood, still and quiet. It felt to me as though the worms were crawling up my leg. I looked down and tried to shake them off, but they were not there. They were all around, but they were not crawling up my legs.