The Girl in the Green Sweater

by Chiger, Krystyna

  The following day, my father and the others made another descent into the sewer, this time to look for a place that might provide adequate shelter. This time, as they stood sideways on the ledge above the Peltew, they saw another lantern swinging in the distance. This was terrible! The men thought they had been seen and would soon be captured. It never occurred to them that the lantern might have belonged to another group of Jews also seeking refuge. They thought it was the Gestapo. There was no place to run. They could only turn off their lantern and hope that whoever it was holding the other lantern had not seen them and would turn back before they reached them. They could not turn back themselves, because without a light to guide them they would surely fall into the rushing wastewaters of the Peltew below. So they stood still and silent, the sound of their breathing swallowed by the sound of the rushing water.

  Finally, the lantern illuminated the faces of my father and his companions. In the light, my father could make out the features of the round-faced man who held the lantern. It did not appear to be the face of a fellow Jew. This face was so round, so ruddy, it was almost cherubic. The man who wore it did not seem to mean them any harm. He seemed more curious than intimidating, my father said. Behind this man, my father could make out the features of another man, his face in shadow. And behind him stood a third man.

  “What are you doing here?” the first man said. He was dressed like a sewer worker, with tall rubber boots and a cloth cap on his head. His tone was pleasant.

  “I am looking for a place to hide my family,” my father said.

  “Here?” the first man said, incredulous. “In the sewer?”

  “It is the only place left,” my father said.

  The first man considered this for a moment, and then he whispered to the men who stood behind him, who were dressed in the same manner. From their whispers, my father could hear that they were discussing whether or not to turn them in to the Gestapo. This seemed to be the preferred action of the two men in the background, but the first man who held the lantern seemed to have a different notion.

  After a short while, the first man spoke: “So it is not just the group of you, then?”

  My father shook his head. “I have a wife and two small children,” he said.

  The man with the lantern seemed to consider this. “Take me to them,” he said.

  It is interesting to me now, in the retelling, that my father did most of the talking, because up until this moment Weiss had presented himself as the leader of the effort. It was Weiss’s initiative, Weiss’s basement, Weiss’s operation. He was always the big talker. But in the sewer Weiss was mostly silent, leaving my father to make this all-important first connection to the man who would ultimately become our savior.

  My father and the other men retreated along the ledge above the Peltew the same way they had come in, their backs to the wall, their feet moving side to side. The three other men followed. They stopped when they arrived at the tunnel to the basement floor. The man with the lantern looked up at the opening. “Look at this,” he said, marveling at the group’s handiwork. “Look at what you have done.” He was silent for a while, and then he said, “Maybe we can help you. For a price, maybe we can help you.”

  This was a welcome thing for my father and the other men to hear, because they did not know if these men were SS, or Gestapo, or Wehrmacht. They did not know if they had been captured and the three men were merely looking for accomplices before shooting them on the spot, or if these three men had no more official business in the sewer than they had themselves. It was a very tentative few moments, my father recalled.

  The man gave his name as Leopold Socha. He was a sewer worker, he said. He introduced his partners, Stefek Wroblewski and Jerzy Kowalow. Kowalow was the foreman of their group, and he was said to be more familiar with the pipes and tunnels and crawl spaces of the sewer than any man in Lvov. Under the right terms, they would consider helping my father and his family, but first there would be much to discuss.

  And then Leopold Socha fit himself through the narrow, spooned-out opening to the basement floor of the barracks above. The sight of his cloth cap peeking through the hole in the basement floor fairly startled my mother, who was expecting my father or one of the other two men. She was sitting and waiting for their return from their underground exploration, my mother having ssshhhed us to sleep some hours earlier. The last thing she expected was to see the cloth cap of a complete stranger. And then, beneath the cap, the stranger himself! My mother pulled us close. Her sudden movement awakened me, but I knew to keep quiet. I was on one side and Pawel was on the other. My mother did not know what to expect. Probably she was terrified. And as for me, probably I was more excited than scared. I took one look at this man’s face and his warm, beautiful eyes, and I could not be afraid of him. I wondered, Who could this be?

  Socha noticed my mother and smiled. He later said that it was at that moment that he decided to help us. The sight of my mother holding us close, like a hen and her two chicks. Kania z piskletami. This became his name for us. And this began a dangerous relationship that would not only save our lives, but also, Leopold Socha hoped, save his soul as well.

  Four

  ESCAPE

  On May 30, 1943, SS Obersturmführer Joseph Grzymek staged his final ceremony. He organized a concert in an old gymnasium and ordered all surviving Jews of the Ju-Lag camp to attend.

  It was another absurdity, forcing this group of oppressed, frightened, grieving, tortured, doomed people into a gymnasium for a party. And yet, my father related, there stood Grzymek by an old gramophone the Germans had carted into the hall, his face beaming, his manner drunk from power and happiness. Everything about the ghetto commander’s appearance was an indication of his self-importance: the leather of his boots had been polished to a sinister shine; his uniform was crisp and perfectly appointed; his hair had been groomed into place. He was in his element, my father said. One of Grzymek’s subordinates played popular Polish records of the 1930s as the ghetto commander encouraged his prisoners to dance. Whether they did so under fear of punishment or simply by coaxing was not clear, but—surprisingly, tellingly—quite a few of them did indeed dance, maybe under the confused thinking that there was something to celebrate or that by dancing, they would somehow win Grzymek’s favor. Or maybe they danced just to dance.

  My father could not understand why Grzymek staged this concert, what he was thinking. Perhaps it was a strategy to lull the Jews into a kind of complacency, like a decoy for what would happen next. Perhaps even in 1943 the pacifying power of music was known to the Nazis. Perhaps Grzymek truly meant it as a kindness, to make a gift of music and dancing to his condemned Jewish prisoners. Perhaps it was a final opportunity for Grzymek’s inferiors to witness the superiority of the ghetto commander. Who can say? He was a twisted madman, so it is difficult to judge his motive here.

  Of course, Pawel and I did not go to this concert. It was not a place for children. Also, the ghetto had already been liquidated of all children, so to make an appearance would have meant certain death. My mother did not go. She stayed in the barracks with us, fretting over what the music might mean. My father went to the gymnasium for a short time to make an appearance, before disappearing to the basement of Weiss’s barracks to continue with his digging. He had learned since his unfortunate introduction to Grzymek to call as little attention to himself as possible and to move furtively about the ghetto. But at the same time, my father had to assume the Germans were taking note of the Jews in attendance and that to not attend the concert at all would have been more than just an insult; it would have been reckless. He certainly did not want the Germans to come looking for him.

  The ghetto was otherwise still. It was a warm spring night. We could hear the sounds of the records through the thin wooden walls of our barracks apartment and through our one window. My father could hear the music from his tiny, suffocating basement work space. I recognized the polka “Roll Out the Barrel.” Such a bouncy, playful tune that on
this night sounded so chilling. It has been almost sixty-five years, and each time I hear that song I am taken back to this strange gymnasium concert. Once again, the power of sense memory is in full evidence; I close my eyes and picture that terrible man Grzymek, smiling insincerely, clapping his hands, trying to show the people a false good time, just as my father described him.

  Even a child knows when a happy sound is laced with sadness. I knew that this concert could only mean that the Germans were once again going to do bad things to the Jews. To us. All along, my parents had done an admirable job protecting us children from what was happening. They wanted us to hold on to our childhoods as long as possible, to not be afraid. I figured out what was going on only in pieces. But here was something beyond my understanding. Here was bouncy, joyous, celebratory music, set against our hopelessness and despair. It made no sense, this concert, this evil, twisted ghetto commander ordering the people to dance and celebrate, and yet it could only mean that something bad was about to happen. This I knew.

  We did not talk about it in our small barracks room. My mother tried to put us to sleep early that night, probably because she had some of these same dark thoughts, and I remember fighting sleep as the spooky sounds of these joyful polkas spilled into our room. In fact, I could not fall asleep right away. Of course, there was no bedroom. There was no bed. There was no mattress, even. I remember sitting on the floor with my mother, my brother sleeping in the crook of her one arm and me lying in the crook of the other, trying to get comfortable. All the time now, I slept with one eye open, but on this night the other eye would not close, either.

  Prior to this night, my father had enjoyed several visits with Leopold Socha, the Polish sewer worker who would be our great benefactor and guardian angel. He had come up four or five times from the sewer to our tiny hiding place in Weiss’s basement by prearrangement to meet with my father and the other men to develop the details of their plan. Sometimes he came by himself, and at other times he was accompanied by Stefek Wroblewski. My father and Weiss and probably Berestycki were always there to meet them. There were others, but I did not know these men yet. Always, Socha would ask for my mother and us children, the hen and her two chicks. This was how he began each meeting, and my father said this greatly annoyed Weiss. He did not like how it moved the emphasis away from his group and seemed to inflate my father’s role.

  Socha did most of the talking during these meetings. The men were afraid that if they asked too many questions, Socha might realize some new difficulty and decide to abandon the plan, but I did not get the sense that Socha would ever abandon us. From the very beginning, I could see this was not his nature. Yes, I was only a child, but I was a good judge of character, and I liked Socha’s character, so much so that I came to look forward to his visits. Pawel, too. Socha used to take Pawel into his lap and play with him while the men spoke. He had a daughter of his own, he told us. Stefcia. She was about two years older than me. He liked children, he said. He had a quiet, gentle demeanor. He used to bring us a special piece of bread or something else to eat, some treat we could not get in the ghetto. He knew how much this meant to us. The other men could not understand how this man they were counting on to save us could spend so much time on foolishness such as playing with my father’s two small children. My mother and father liked that Socha showed us this kindness. It meant he could be trusted and that he saw us as human beings instead of as a group of desperate Jews willing to give him some money for protection.

  I liked that Socha took Pawel on his lap. I liked that he gave us attention. I liked his bright smile. He had such beautiful white teeth, and when he smiled it filled the barracks basement as if with sunshine. He was always saying to me and my brother, “It will be okay, little ones. It will be okay.” It was such a great comfort, hearing this, because he said it in such a way that I could not help but believe it.

  How it would be okay, the men could not yet say for certain. Even Socha could not say for certain. The only certainty was that my father was pleased to have a course of action. It was a good and necessary thing, he said, to be taking control of our own destinies instead of having our destinies controlled by the Germans. One of the first issues the men were made to consider was payment for Socha’s protection. The three sewer workers were asking for 500 zlotys per day, about $100. It would have been a small fortune in any city in Eastern Europe in the early 1940s, but it was especially so in the Ju-Lag of Lvov in 1943. No Jews had any money anymore. No Jews had a paying job. All we had was what we had managed to save and secret away.

  On the one hand, yes, 500 zlotys per day was a lot of money, but the zloty had been so devalued during the war that it was difficult to gauge its worth. This daily amount was four or five times the weekly wage of the average Polish laborer, yet there was very little you could buy with it in and around Lvov. What good is money when it does not circulate among the people? Many of the goods and services in the ghetto were bartered, and many more were exchanged on the black market. The Jews, of course, could not buy anything, but even if you were Polish, it was difficult. Still, there was always the chance it would be worth something again after the war, and for this daily amount the sewer workers were promising to find us a safe place to hide, to bring us food and other necessary supplies on a regular basis, and to protect our hideaway from being discovered by the authorities in whatever ways they could. There were no guarantees, but under the agreement they would make every effort to protect us, until such time that our protection was impossible. They would use the money to pay for our food and supplies and divide what was left among the three of them—and even with these deductions and the devaluation of the zloty, there figured to be a rich windfall.

  Weiss and the others wanted to negotiate with Socha on the price, but my father had already agreed to it. His consorts told my father he was crazy, to place such trust in the hands of a stranger. What if Socha took the money and turned them in to the Germans? What if he took the money and abandoned them to the rats and the filth and the rushing waters of the sewer? My father responded that they had no choice but to trust this man and his colleagues. Anyway, there was nothing else he could do with his money other than to use it for his family’s protection, until it ran out. There were no other options: soon the Ju-Lag would be no more, soon even the Janowska camp would be liquidated of all Jews. And so it was settled. My father would pay half of the quoted amount; the other men would all contribute to the remaining total. The women and children would not be counted. They would pay Socha and his colleagues for as long as they could, never thinking that they would count their confinement for any longer than a few weeks.

  This decision by my father to accept Socha’s terms caused significant tension among the group. In the beginning, it was Weiss who was in charge—it was his plan, his basement, his initiative—and yet when the three men were first discovered by the sewer workers on their exploration of the sewer, it was my father who did the talking. This was a reflection of their personalities: my father was gregarious and personable; Weiss was gruff and miserable. Still, Weiss considered himself the leader of this loose operation, and most of the other men looked to him in this role as well. In addition to the men I have named, there were others, probably half a dozen or so, and these men too looked to Weiss. For my father, a simple carpenter who had come late to their discussions, who had the temerity to bring his wife and two small children into their midst, to agree to such a steep price on his own authority was a cause for concern. Yes, it was true that my father had agreed to carry half the burden, but this was a small point. My father had not accepted these terms to challenge Weiss’s power, and yet that was how it must have been perceived, because it shifted the power among the group. My father had his own ideas about how to protect his family, and he would not bend to the majority if he felt that to do so would jeopardize his family—a family that now seemed to occupy a special place in the affections of Leopold Socha. Also, my father must have known how much money he had, how much jewelry, ho
w much silver, and he must have calculated that if he alone could afford half of Socha’s fee, he did not need to consult with the others on price.

  On these visits to Weiss’s basement barracks, Socha developed a kind of friendship with my father and a fondness for my family. This closeness also contributed to the tension in our group, as more and more it seemed to the others that Socha was working for my father and not for them. My father started calling Socha “Poldju,” a familiar variation of Socha’s first name, Leopold. They talked about the war. They talked about what was at stake for Socha and his colleagues, what they were risking by protecting us. They talked about what might happen to us if we were ever discovered in our underground hideaway. Also, they talked about Socha’s family and his background, and these things together helped to convince my father that Socha was a good man.

  While it was true that my father, Weiss, Berestycki, and the others had nothing to lose by placing their fates in the hands of these three Polish sewer workers, the sewer workers themselves were risking everything by their association with us. Even before we descended into the sewer, the fact that they were meeting with us in our basement barracks and discussing our safekeeping was enough to get them hanged—along with their wives and children.

  Socha’s colleague Jerzy Kowalow located a safe place for us to hide, and Socha arrived in Weiss’s barracks basement one evening to give my father and the other men the location. He drew a map and told them how to get there. He also told them where he and Stefek Wroblewski would leave supplies for them in one of the underground passageways—some planks of wood, some cleaning materials, and other items the men would need to prepare the hiding place for our arrival. We would need boots, the sewer workers said, because where they were going they would have to slog through several feet of water and mud. Immediately, my father went with Weiss, Berestycki, my uncle Kuba, and another man who had joined our party named Mundek Margulies to begin preparing the hiding space. Margulies was a barber by profession. He was short and scheming and adventurous. Everyone called him Korsarz, because he looked so much like a pirate. (Korsarz was the Polish word for “Corsica,” which was the term used for pirate.)