Thu, Oct 07, 2021 page6

• Ukrainians find places in city sewer where Jews hid

  • Reuters, LVIV, Ukraine
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  Under cobblestone streets in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, diggers have uncovered new hiding spots in underground sewers where some Jews managed to flee from Nazi occupation forces during World War II.

  More than 100,000 Jews, or about one-third of the city’s population at the time, were killed by the Nazis, local historian Hanna Tychka said.

  A few managed to survive, including father and daughter Ignacy and Krystyna Chiger, who escaped from the Jewish ghetto by digging a tunnel to the city’s sewage system, and later wrote books recounting their experiences.

  

  Historian Hanna Tychka explores the sewage system of Lviv, Ukraine, on Sept. 25 where she found a cave used by Jews hiding from the Nazis in World War II.

  Photo: Reuters

  Tychka and local diggers said that they have uncovered the exact area where Chiger’s family lived in 1943 and 1944, using the books as a guide.

  Chiger dug a 7m-long tunnel to the sewer from his ghetto barracks, breaking the sewer’s concrete wall, which was 90cm thick, Tychka said.

  “They had to work quietly so that Nazis would not find out that digging activity was happening in the barrack basement. The Jews used a hammer wrapped in a duster,” Tychka told reporters near the site of the discovery.

  Ukraine last month and this month is marking the 80th anniversary of the mass shooting of nearly 34,000 civilians at the wooded ravine of Babyn Yar in the capital, Kiev, one of the biggest single massacres of Jews during the Holocaust.

  In July, Tychka and her team discovered a tiny cave in Lviv where they believe Jews fleeing the ghetto would spend their first night before moving on to a larger shelter in the sewage system.

  In the larger shelter, the team found artefacts that they believe were used by the hiding families, including a corroded plate, the figurine of a sheep and traces of carbide used for lanterns. They also discovered pieces of glass placed in between bricks in the wall, which were used to prevent rats from stealing food.

  On a visit to the site, Tychka also pointed out a pipe from where she believed the families could take drinking water.

  Chiger’s family was part of a larger group that also included Halina Wind Preston, then in her early 20s.

  Of the original group of 21, only 10 — including the Chigers and Halina — survived the ordeal, her son, David Lee Preston, said.

  Several could not stand the conditions in the sewer for long and left, and the group faced the constant danger of being discovered.

  A baby born to one of the women in the group, whose husband had been swept away by water while going out to get drinking water, had to be suffocated for fear that its crying would give away their location, Preston said.

  Preston, who worked as a journalist for many years, wrote several articles for the Philadelphia Inquirer after his mother’s death, recounting her story as well as that of his father, a former prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald death camps.

  Preston, who maintains a Web site about the family’s experiences and his reporting on the Holocaust, said that his mother and her group were helped throughout the time they lived in the sewer by two sewer workers.

  They left their hiding place when Lviv was taken back by the Soviet Army in July 1944.

  The film In Darkness, a dramatized account of the group’s survival by Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland, was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2012 Academy Awards.
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