The Girl in the Green Sweater

by Chiger, Krystyna

  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.

  We stood like this for several moments, until another cry shook us from our thoughts. This time, it sounded like my uncle Kuba, screaming for help. At first, my parents did not seem to hear. Or maybe they did not recognize the voice as Kuba’s. So I told them, “It is Kuba. Don’t you hear? It’s Kuba.”

  My father ran for the main canal, but first he gave my mother instructions to stay in this terrible place with the children. She was not happy about it, none of us were happy about it, but there was no place else to go. Also, to leave would mean to risk separating from my father, and she had already become separated from her own father. My father would come back to this place to find us.

  Next, my father retreated to the ledge along the Peltew, and there he saw Kuba, flailing about in the rushing water. My uncle had managed to grab a small promontory reaching out from the wall toward the river and had kept himself from being swept downstream. As before, he had slipped and fallen, only this time my father had not been right there to rescue him. Berestycki was off someplace else, the two men must have gotten separated, which left only my father to save his brother-in-law. He did this by following Kuba’s cries until he reached him, then pulling the belt from his pants and tossing one end into the water, so Kuba was able to grab it and my father could pull him to safety. It was a dramatic rescue, to hear them tell it afterward. Kuba was so heavy, my father said, and the current so great, it was like pulling a fallen tree limb from the banks of a river.

  Unfortunately, this piece of good fortune came with some bad luck beneath it, because my father and Kuba somehow lost their bearings and could not find their way directly back to our disgusting chamber. It was easy enough to follow the river, upstream or downstream, but the pipes and chambers and other small openings that fed into the main canal were sometimes difficult to locate in the near darkness. We waited and waited for them to return, but they never came. My mother could not wait so long in that disgusting place. She could not understand what was taking my father so long. She did not say anything to me and Pawel, but she started to think he and Kuba had drowned. The uncertainty, the conditions . . . it was just awful! I did not know to think that something bad might have happened to my father, and I did not mind the conditions so much because I was with my mother. It was horrible, but I did not mind. After all those hours, day after day, hiding in those confined spaces my father had built for me and my brother, never knowing if or when my parents would return, this filthy rat hole was like nothing, because my mother was with us. And I was conditioned by this point to expect my father to return. Always, whenever he left, to go to work or to run an errand of some kind, he would come back to us before long. It was the way of our family, the way of our circumstance. But my mother could not stay there. It was unbearable. She said, “Whatever will happen, will happen.” She said that even if the Gestapo found us, it would be better than staying in such a hellish place. She must have known this meant we might not find my father in the maze of tunnels and pipes and chambers, but she did not speak of this. Anyway, it did not matter. She could not stay there.

  And so we left. We had a small light my father had left behind, and my mother used this to help us return to the main canal, to the slippery ledge above the Peltew, and we continued in the direction we had been going, the river to our right now that we had crossed that first bridge. We did not walk side by side, as before. We moved instead like a tight sandwich, my brother pressed close to the wall, my mother squeezed into the middle, and me on the border of the ledge. It was difficult footing. My mother held my hand tightly, and it was a good thing too because I kept slipping. Every few steps, I lost my footing and fell knee-deep into the Peltew before my mother could snap me back up to the ledge like a rag doll.

  It was so dark. We had the light, but we could not easily use it. My mother did not have enough hands to hold the light and at the same time hold me and my brother. She would not trust the light to me or Pawel; we might drop it into the river or onto the stone ledge. So we fumbled our way through the darkness. I was scared, but not so terribly scared. I did not mind dipping into the water because I knew my mother would snap me right back up. She was strong, and I was little. It might have been a game, had it not been so dark and dirty and dangerous. W
e walked and walked along the river, not really knowing where we were going, just going.

  It is interesting to me now that I did not once ask for my father as we were going against his instructions. I was old enough to realize that by leaving this terrible place, we might never reconnect with him, but I did not say anything and did not question my mother. I was also happy to leave this disgusting, filthy place, so I did not think too much about my father just then.

  We walked along the main canal for several minutes. I kept slipping into the water and my mother kept pulling me back to the narrow ledge. Finally, we saw another lantern ahead, and now suddenly I thought of my father. I screamed, “Daddy, Daddy!”

  And that is who it was. My father wrote later that my mother was so desperate, so crazy, when she reached him that it was a long while before he was able to calm her. She had not shown her panic to Pawel and me, but she was hysterical with concern over my father. She did not think we would ever see him again, and once we were reunited she nearly broke down. Probably she was overwhelmed with grief and concern for her own father at the same time she was overjoyed at finding her husband. This lasted only a few minutes, and then she was back to herself, but in those few minutes her desperate, crazy happiness at finding my father became mine. Pawel’s, too. We could not believe our good fortune at being by his side once again, even though we had moved from that terrible place where he had left us without really knowing where we were or how we might reconnect. It was certainly an odd, unsettling sequence of events, with the momentarily joyful outcome that we were reunited once more.

  Berestycki, meanwhile, had located Socha and the other members of our group, and Socha had asked him to retrace his steps and hopefully find our family, so Berestycki doubled back along the main canal and managed to intercept us during our joyful reunion. He reported on Socha’s whereabouts. He told my father and Kuba that all along the Peltew there were people falling to their deaths. Already, we had seen some of this for ourselves, but not to the extent Berestycki was telling us. So many people! So many tragedies! From the different manholes on the street, people were spilling into the sewer, dozens and dozens of people, and in the panic and disorder most of them were drowning. It was a tragic irony, the men agreed, that so many people should descend into the sewers to escape certain death only to find certain death in the currents of the river.

  Socha was with Weiss and the others, Berestycki said. They were with quite a lot of people, including many women and possibly even some children. These other people from outside our group did not know what to do with themselves. They did not have a plan. Weiss and the others had not made it to the special hiding place they had worked so hard to prepare. Everyone had been swept up by the noise and confusion and pushed along in the surge of people. When Socha arrived among this group, they descended upon him like famished prisoners seeking a small piece of bread. What they were hungry for, Berestycki said, was a small piece of hope, and this was what Socha represented. He stood before them as their salvation, and they quickly surrounded him, begging for him to save them from this dreadful situation. At this, Socha stated very clearly that he would offer what help he could, but only for Ignacy Chiger and his family, the hen and her two chicks. Kania z piskletami. The others, he would continue to help as well, but our family was his priority, he said. He would help the others because by doing so, he would also help our family, because he knew we would need several sets of hands to help us survive our underground ordeal.

  My mother asked Berestycki if he had seen her father in the forward group, but he could not be certain. Probably he knew my grandfather was not among Weiss’s party, but he did not want to be the one to tell her.

  I listened in, but I could not be scared. I was too happy to learn that our beloved Socha was looking for us here in the sewer, because I knew that under his care we would be okay. This was what he had told me during all those visits to Weiss’s barracks basement, and I fairly flew to the area where Socha and the others were waiting. Of course, it was another long walk along the difficult, narrow ledge and through a small pipe, but I did not notice the time or the difficulty. When we finally arrived, Socha was standing with the others, and when he saw us his face bloomed with light.

  Socha was happy to see us, but I could see on his face that he was also frustrated and worried. He did not know what to do with such a large group of people. There were over seventy of us now, in the side canal where he had gathered the group. He was also angry at Weiss. He was a smart man, Socha, and he suspected that Weiss was somehow profiting from his association with the sewer workers. There were so many people gathered around Weiss, addressing him in familiar, entitled terms, that Socha began to think Weiss had collected money from these people and in exchange had offered Socha’s protection. Probably Weiss did not think Socha was so smart and was trying to put one over on him. These people were not complete strangers, as Weiss would have Socha believe; a great many were likely friends and associates to whom Weiss had promised some measure of safekeeping. Socha was never able to confirm this, but this was what he suspected, and my father would come to share his suspicion.

  My mother’s eyes searched frantically among this group for her father. She called his name. She asked people in the crowd if anyone had seen him, but many of these people were also looking for friends and family and could not be troubled. She was caught in the space between hoping for the best for herself and her own little family and believing the worst about her father.

  Whether or not Weiss took money from these others, their presence was a big problem. To look after so many Jews in the sewer was a big undertaking, and a big risk. Socha did not think it was a good idea for us to remain with such a large group, that it would put our family at risk. Also, it would put him and his colleagues in jeopardy. It was too dangerous, this many people, too difficult. Socha did not like that he had been put in this situation, to have to determine the fates of all these strangers. Plus, there were children among this group, and Socha did not wish to turn his back on a child. He and his colleagues had not agreed to these terms. He would not play God for these people, he said, because even God would not undertake a doomed enterprise.

  Socha took my father aside and told him he would have to think about what he would do next. He would have to consult with Kowalow to determine a new strategy, whether to find a new place to hide this big crowd of people, whether to find a new place to hide only the original group, whether to abandon the plan altogether.

  After a few moments, Socha and Wroblewski left, promising to return when they could do so safely. The strangers among our group were very angry at this, and they began yelling and screaming once more at Weiss and his fellows, but there was nothing Weiss could do and no place for any of us to go. Seventy people in such a small place was quite a lot of people, and we could not move about so easily. We were huddled in a small tunnel. My father recognized the location. He determined that we were beneath the corner of Cebulna and Boznicza streets, where during the day there was a farmer’s market in the square. At least, before the war there had been such a market, where the local women sold fresh bread and produce. I remembered going to this market when I was a small girl, the smell of the wonderful Kulikowski bread, the bustle of activity. I could not understand how this terrible place where we were standing could be directly beneath the place of such warm, wonderful smells. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine it. My father whispered to me that it would soon be morning, and I realized I had not thought about what was happening outside for the longest time. It could have been daylight. It could have been darkness. It made no difference to us.

  Another sense memory: the smell of the Kulikowski bread has stayed with me. I remembered it as a small child, trapped in the sewer, and I remember it still. When I finally came to the United States, to New York City, I was tired of the processed white bread that was sold in most stores. It was the 1970s, and all there was in American supermarkets was Wonder Bread. But then, as we were driving one afternoon on Broadwa
y, around 80th Street, those same wonderful smells came to me through the open windows of our car. Immediately, I shouted out, “Kulikowski bread! Kulikowski bread!” I was so excited. I got out of the car and followed my nose across the street to the bakery section of Zabar’s, surrounded by all these fresh breads that smelled fantastically like the fresh breads they used to sell at the market above our first underground hiding place. I had never heard of Zabar’s, but this is how I discovered it, by what I remembered.

  There were not so many dry places to sit in this small tunnel where Socha had left us. Most of the people were standing. My mother found a stone to sit on and made a place for us on her lap. She held us close and tried to rock us to sleep, but of course I could not sleep. Pawel slept for a while, but I held tight to my mother and ached for her as she wept silent tears for my grandfather, for all of us. My father stood huddled with some of the men, discussing a strategy. Everyone was speaking in a whisper, careful to keep our voices from being heard. When people yelled, it was also in a kind of whisper, and I remember thinking it was somewhat funny, that people were angry enough to raise their voices but not so angry that they would lift the volume as well.

  After a while, it became difficult to breathe. Some people had brought candles, and the candles kept going out because there was not enough oxygen to feed the flames. Once we realized what was happening, we used the candles sparingly. A few people carried flashlights, but these stopped working before long. We spent most of the time in darkness. There was nothing much to see, anyway. In each sliver of light I could see hundreds of rats scurrying about. It was better, I thought, not to see at all.

  At the time, I thought this tunnel was a big open space, but it was only about three or four meters wide, maybe six or seven meters long. This explained why the candles kept going out—we were pressed together close, breathing one another’s air. We were sitting up against the legs of the other people. From my perspective near the ground, I could see the legs of another few children. Already, I had heard their voices, but now, in the flickering candlelight, I could see them, and I tried to remember the last time I had seen another child. I wanted to call out to these children, but I could not. I did not know how to raise my voice and still keep to a whisper. I could only keep still and quiet in this horrible place. Everyone was so quiet, so nervous. We were careful not to make any unnecessary noise, wondering what was happening above us on the street. In the quiet, I imagine all these strangers were wondering about their families. For us, this was not a worry, because the rest of our family had been taken. There were only the four of us and Uncle Kuba.