The Girl in the Green Sweater

by Chiger, Krystyna

  My father knew precisely where we were in relation to the streets aboveground. He knew this church and the surrounding square. Underground, he was not always so sure how to get from place to place, but he was proud of how well he knew the streets and buildings of Lvov. He took such enormous pleasure in this. I was proud of my father, too. He was also our guardian angel. And he knew so much! About so many things! My father could tell you when this church was built, when that road was expanded, when this part of the sewer was finally covered. Whatever you wanted to know about the city, he would tell you. He would come to know the underground pipes and tunnels as well as he knew the streets and alleyways of Lvov, but in the beginning Socha had to draw him a map.

  The chamber beneath the church was about ten meters by twelve meters. At the bottom of the far wall, there was an opening to the pipe that was our only safe exit. On the other end of the chamber, above our heads, a manhole led directly to the street. There was an iron ladder bolted to the wall, reaching to the manhole cover, and we sometimes used this ladder to hang our few things, to dry our clothing if it was wet, to keep any extra food from the reach of the rats on the floor below. We were so close to the church and its surrounding square that we could hear the people talking on the street above our heads. We had to remind ourselves to keep very quiet in this underground space, because of course if we could hear the sounds from above, then we could be heard from below. I could hear the children playing. Always, they were playing. This was how we could tell day from night. If we could hear the children playing, it meant the sun was shining.

  I did not like this place. I did not mind it, but I did not like it, either. What was there to like? It was dark, and foul-smelling, and wretchedly cold. It was uncomfortable sitting so long on those round stones, and of course there was not enough ceiling height for the adults to stand straight. They had to walk stooped over. Pawel and I could stand and walk about, but the adults were too tall. Even Jacob Berestycki, whom I now noticed had an unfortunate hunchback, could not manage to reach his full height.

  The pipe leading into our hideaway had a radius of only forty centimeters, yet my father and the other men had to crawl through it each day in order to retrieve drinking water for our group. It was an arduous task. It seems almost impossible to me now that this was what the men had to do in order to supply our group with drinking water, but this was how it was. Socha estimated that it was about two kilometers to the dripping fountain that was the source of our freshwater, a long way to go when you are crawling, holding a teakettle in your teeth by its handle, in a pipe so narrow that there is hardly room to move. At the other end, after the men reached the fountain, they would have to retreat backward, because there was not enough room in those forty-centimeter pipes to turn around. In the seventy-centimeter pipes you could turn around, but not in the smaller ones. The men would go two and sometimes three at a time to fetch the water, and the round-trip would take nearly two hours—a long way to go for such a little bit of water. Sometimes it was such a tight squeeze, my father would come back with his arms all scratched and bloodied from the hard, sharp edges of the pipe and the bolts that jutted into the passageway. His clothes would be torn.

  From time to time, a group of men would make other excursions in search of material and supplies. They did not yet know their way underground so well and could only retrace their steps, so several of these excursions were return trips to our basement barracks, to the opening they had dug in the cement floor several weeks earlier. There they would find discarded household items like pots and pans, and these articles were as precious to us as jewels. Whatever we needed, we could usually find there, until one of our group became careless. He was spotted one afternoon through the barracks window, rummaging through our left-behind things, by a Gestapo officer. Immediately, the German gave chase, but the men were able to retreat safely to the sewer. The next time they returned, however, they found the basement opening had been covered with boards.

  Socha and Wroblewski also used this forty-centimeter pipe, which opened into our one small room. It was the only underground passageway that led to where we were sitting, so there was no other option. My father and the other men were not yet used to moving about in such a tight, narrow space, but Socha and Wroblewski were used to it. This was how they moved about in their underground world, how they got from place to place. Every day, they would bring a little bit of food for our group. Usually, it was just a loaf or two of bread, although my father wrote in his journal that they also brought sausages. I do not remember the sausages, but that might be because I soon became very, very sick and was not interested in eating. I developed a violent case of diarrhea and dysentery that lasted for weeks and weeks, beginning almost as soon as we made camp beneath the church. Pawel, too. In fact, everyone became sick in the beginning, in our small chamber beneath Maria Sniezna, but no one was as sick as Pawel and me. This was when my parents began giving their daily ration of freshwater to me and my brother. They collected their share—three-quarters of a glass—but they would not take a drop; they saved it for me and Pawel and in this way probably kept us alive. My father wrote later that he was so sick himself, and so thirsty, that he sometimes drank the sewer water to quench his thirst, thinking it could not make him any sicker than he already was. Probably this was not such a good idea, but he did it anyway. He did not think it was possible to become sick on top of sick. No one could determine if we were sick from the germs in the freshwater, from the food, or from the bacteria in the air, but it was a debilitating, exhausting sickness. Disgusting, too, although I cannot say that our diarrhea and nausea contributed in any meaningful way to the waste that was already all around.

  For many years, I remembered that Pawel was sickest of all during these first days and weeks and that my parents were frantic with worry about his health, but when as an adult I finally read my father’s manuscript, I realized I was the sick one. I was so disoriented, so dehydrated, that I placed the worst of my sickness on my little brother. Already, I had spent most of the previous four years taking care of little Pawelek, protecting him, collecting his hurts, that to carry the full force of our sickness must have seemed to me my due.

  In addition to food, Socha and Wroblewski would bring us supplies—carbide, for the lamps they had given us to use; tools and materials, so that the men might improve our living conditions; medicine, if one of our group was sick. One day Socha brought a curative for Pawel, who was suffering from some angina and strep throat. This was my mother’s diagnosis, and she wanted him to have some medication. Socha and my father, however, were worried that if Socha went too many times to the pharmacy, it might alert the authorities, and we could not afford to arouse suspicion or have Socha followed. He actually went to the pharmacy, but then he turned around and left without trying to purchase anything because he was so worried, and the next day he came back to our chamber and asked my mother if there was something else he could bring for my brother. She suggested a home remedy known as a gogel mogel, which was popular among Jewish families across Eastern Europe. The precise recipe changed from family to family, from region to region, but my mother made it with eggs and sugar. The mixture was said to be very good for the throat. She mentioned this to Socha, who promised to return the next day with the ingredients.

  A few hours later, however, we heard a clamoring in the pipe that opened into our chamber. Someone was coming! My father stood by the opening with a stick, thinking this might be an intruder, and then through the opening we saw Socha. This was such a surprise! He had not wanted to wait a whole day to deliver the remedy for Pawel, so he had gathered the ingredients and crawled once again through the forty-centimeter pipe for the second time that day. He had crawled with four eggs tucked carefully inside a handkerchief, which he had knotted on the sides and carried in his teeth, like a St. Bernard. Can you imagine? Crawling through several kilometers of pipes, carrying such a delicate thing as four eggs with his mouth, to make certain they would not break. This was why my mother t
hought of Socha as our guardian angel—and soon enough the rest of us would think of him in this way as well.

  Socha and Wroblewski were extremely careful about their daily trips to our hideaway. They came to us each time from a different street entrance, and we could hear them sloshing through the mud and water for a full half hour before they actually arrived. Such a noise they made, clambering through that pipe! Always, their colleague Kowalow was stationed as a lookout on the streets above. The sewer workers had a ready alibi in case they were discovered. They were always dressed in waterproof overalls and rubber hip boots, carrying appropriate tools and lanterns, so if they were ever questioned, they could convincingly maintain that they were on legitimate sewer business. And, indeed, they often were, because there was usually some proper assignment for them to carry out as well. It was the contents of their satchels that worried them—how to explain the food and other supplies—so they determined that if they were ever confronted, they would throw the satchels into the river and let the current carry them away.

  Early on, the sewer workers had an opportunity to use this alibi during a dangerous encounter with a Gestapo officer as they attempted to descend into the tunnel from the street. The man approached them in a questioning manner, and Socha and Wroblewski quickly tossed their satchels into the water as planned, after which they argued with the man for distracting them and causing them to lose their supply of cement in the river. Their confrontational approach was effective, because the Gestapo officer soon waved them along. Of course, we went without food that day because our daily ration of bread and other supplies was floating down the Peltew.

  On most days, Socha and Wroblewski would bring something else to go along with the food, whatever they could comfortably carry in the satchels they wore slung over their shoulders so that their hands might be free for crawling. When we were sick with dysentery, for example, and the cold water from the fountain seemed to aggravate our stomachs, my father requested some rubbing alcohol and a tin can of sardines; he improvised a Sterno stove by lighting the alcohol and warming the water in the tin can. In this way, my father was able to soothe our stomachs and still make sure we received the water we needed to survive. The sewer workers brought these things and anything else they could obtain and carry. They would also deliver news from the Ju-Lag, which my father and the others would discuss in whispers throughout the day. Socha and Wroblewski would not stay long, only long enough to assess our situation and to rest for a few moments before making the return crawl through the narrow pipe. They would also collect their payment, which my father handed to them daily. Socha himself suggested this arrangement. He did not want my father to give him a large sum all at once, because no one knew how long we would have to hide and because Socha did not want to put my father in the position of wondering whether or not the sewer workers would return to complete the job. What if something happened to Socha on his way to or from this hiding place? What if our sewer workers were discovered? It was better, Socha said, for my father to pay them each day and in this way to keep their association on a very professional level, with mutual trust.

  Very quickly, the man who had orchestrated much of our escape and who attempted to coordinate much of our confinement revealed himself to be a man of dishonor. This did not surprise my father, he later said. And it did not surprise me. I was an observant child, and I could tell from the beginning that this Weiss was not a good person. He was mean-spirited and deceitful. He had left his wife and daughter in our basement barracks when they had been too scared to descend into the sewer. And now it turned out that he would not pay his full share of the money to Socha after all. Neither would his friends. There were other men who were meant to pay as well—strangers to us, but not necessarily to Weiss—and they would also neglect their debt. They simply did not have it to give. What little they had was gone in the first few days, and after that the burden fell almost entirely on my father. This placed my father in a dilemma. He was worried that if he told Socha about the default of the other men, it might upset our situation in any number of ways. He thought it would be better if he continued paying Socha the full amount and making up the difference from his own pocket. In this way, Socha would not have cause to think that the group he had chosen was in any way duplicitous. Certainly, my father resented the way this obligation had shifted to him, but he did not think it was in our interest to challenge the others or to call their delinquency to Socha’s attention. And so he paid.

  One by one, I began to take notice of many of our new associates. We tended to sit in two groups, on either side of the small chamber. In our group there was usually myself, my brother, my father, my mother, and my uncle. Also, Jacob Berestycki, a tailor who was perhaps the most observant Jew among our group; Mundek Margulies (Korsarz the Pirate), a barber, who was a practical joker and a determined worker; and a young woman named Klara Keler, who had attached herself to my mother on our first night in the sewer and said, “You will be my mother.” Pani bedzie moja mama. My mother did not argue. Klara had come to our expedition through Korsarz, and we liked them both. Already, we could see they were of good, strong character. If Klara wanted to cling to my mother for security, my mother did not mind. Her arms were full with me and Pawel, but there was room in her heart for another.

  In the other group there was Weiss, who continued to see himself as the leader of our underground society. With him was his mother, old Mrs. Weiss, whom we all called “Babcia,” and a young woman named Halina Wind. Babcia was a good woman with an awful son. At the time, we all thought of her as elderly, but it was our situation that made her seem so aged, so frail.

  Halina Wind was another story. She was a difficult character in those first weeks, when she was aligned with Weiss. She came into the sewer with him when his own wife would not, and she moved about in our small hiding place as if she were married to the man in charge. There was something between them—what, I could not be sure. When Socha and Wroblewski arrived with our daily bread, it was Halina who collected the rations and handed them out to the rest of us. She did this at Weiss’s pleasure, of course. She carried herself like a queen feeding her royal subjects, my father always said, and invariably she gave the biggest portions to Weiss and his mother and his cronies.

  Also in Weiss’s group were Shmiel Weinberg and his wife, Genia, and the brothers Chaskiel and Itzek Orenbach. This was the disagreeable faction of our group. These were the men who were always criticizing Socha’s ability to make good on his promise to look after us. They did not like the food he was bringing for us. The bread was stale, they said. The portions were meager. They did not like the living conditions, as if Socha himself were responsible for the filth of the sewer. They did not like my father, or Kuba, or Berestycki, or Korsarz, and they argued against any decisions or opinions they offered. Always, this disagreeable group huddled in the far corner of our small chamber, whispering some new strategy or other. Weinberg was probably the most vocal of this group, after Weiss. He was the loudest complainer. And he liked to criticize! So did the Orenbachs, only not so loudly. Together, the four of them were such a negative, disruptive influence on our lives that it was no wonder we could not get along.

  In time we learned that during the German occupation, Shmiel and Genia Weinberg had placed their young daughter with an Aryan woman, in much the same way my parents had sought to make arrangements for me to be taken in by that nice teacher. This was a heartbreaking thing to discover about someone you had already decided you did not like; it put them in a different light. At least, it put Genia Weinberg in a different, more compassionate light. Shmiel Weinberg was too difficult and unpleasant to consider with any compassion. And here was another reason for compassion: Weinbergova was already a few months pregnant with another child when we descended into the sewer on the night of the final liquidation. She had not told anyone. I do not know if she even told her husband. Absolutely, Weiss and the other men would have discouraged her from seeking sanctuary in the sewer if they had known her condit
ion. And Socha would never have allowed it. Of course, no one had any way of knowing how long we would be forced to hide underground, but everyone had to know such conditions would be unhealthy for a pregnant woman and her unborn child.

  It took a long time for anyone in our group to notice Weinbergova’s condition. She always wore a big black coat, and when she was sitting she covered herself with this coat, like a blanket. Also, it was very dark in this second chamber beneath the Mari Sniezna church, so it was difficult to make a close inspection of anyone. This was a good and welcome thing when it came to protecting one another’s privacy—when we had to step into the shadows in the corner of the room to relieve ourselves, for example—but it also made it possible for Weinbergova to conceal her condition from the rest of the group for a while longer.

  There was also a man named Dr. Weiss in our party. He was no relation to the bullying Weiss. In fact, I do not know that he was connected in any way to anyone else in our group. He was a lone character. He may have made an appeal to Socha when our group was being winnowed to its present number, after which Socha determined he would be included among us. We all liked Dr. Weiss well enough. He was helpful. He took his turn to fetch the water without protest. He accepted his daily ration of bread and water with gratitude. He gave what money he had as his share of payment, for as long as he had it to give. I do not think I exchanged two words with this man during the entire time we shared our underground place, but I never heard a word against him.