The Girl in the Green Sweater

by Chiger, Krystyna

  It was the middle of June 1944, and the German defense lines were beginning to collapse. This land mine operation was a last desperate measure to maintain control of Lvov. Wehrmacht personnel were digging trenches along the city streets. There was such a noise that we could hear the hammering and the jackhammers below. We did not know what these noises might mean. At first we thought the Germans had discovered our location and were breaking through to capture us from the streets above, such was our narrow worldview from our underground chamber.

  Thinking quickly, the three sewer workers approached the Wehrmacht officer who appeared to be in charge. Our friends were dressed in their working clothes and so had the authority to accompany their charade. Kowalow presented himself as an engineer for the city’s sewer district. He told the officer that the sewers below were filled with pockets of explosive gases. Along every pipe, he said, there were also gas lines. He warned the officer that his soldiers were in grave danger by digging in this area without a map of these underground pipes. It was a suicide mission, he said, to lay mines in such proximity to these explosive gases. It was even dangerous just to dig, he said, because if one of those gas lines burst, the entire area would be threatened.

  As Kowalow, Socha, and Wroblewski made their arguments above, we moved frantically to secure our position below. We did not know what was happening. We could only scramble to protect ourselves and so began to cover the opening to our chamber with dirt and mud and silt. My father and some of the other men thought this would be a good strategy. We used some of the empty food storage tins to help move the dirt. It was a fool’s mission, we realized later, but at the time we feared we were about to be discovered; so as the Germans were digging from above we were digging from below, trying to unearth enough dirt to conceal the opening into our Palace chamber.

  Meanwhile, up above there was such authority and concern in Kowalow’s voice that the Wehrmacht officer put an immediate halt to the mining. He was not happy about it, but he did not want to put his men at risk. He did not want to go against the recommendation of this man who presented himself as an engineer and who spoke so convincingly about the danger of the gas lines below. Our sewer workers, of course, were extremely happy about this and knew that we had diverted disaster once more.

  Down below, our underground family breathed a happy sigh when the sounds of the digging suddenly stopped. We would have to wait for Socha’s next visit to learn what had happened, but for the time being we knew that we had been spared.

  A week or so later, we could hear the sounds of fighter planes flying overhead and the bombs being dropped on the streets of the city. This development corresponded to the accounts my father and Socha had been reading in the newspapers, but the events filled our chamber with a mixture of excitement and dread. We knew that the same bombs meant to liberate us might kill us first instead. An explosion on the street directly above our chamber would certainly compromise our sewer and the stone walls all around, and we would be crushed in the rubble.

  It was an anxious time, and the curious thing was that it was a good anxiety thrown together with a bad anxiety. We began to believe our liberation was near, and this was a welcome development because we did not know how much longer we could survive in our primitive environment. It had been over a year since we had set up housekeeping in the Palace, and although we had made the best of our unfortunate circumstance, we recognized that we could not remain here forever. Our health was quickly deteriorating, especially among the adults. Pawel and I were mostly fine; after our initial bouts of dysentery and occasional other ailments, we had developed a kind of immunity to the germs and the bacteria and the malnutrition. We were a sturdy and resilient pair. However, the adults in our group were experiencing more and more aches and pains as our confinement continued. Already we had lost old Mrs. Weiss to these impossible living conditions. To live so long in such constant dampness, with so little oxygen, so little food, it was only a matter of time before others began to fail. My father noted in his memoir that some of the adults in our party were experiencing difficulty with their eyes because of the constant darkness. Others were experiencing joint pain and swelling. Others feared their spines would be permanently crooked from being constantly bent in a stooped-over position.

  At night, when they thought everyone else was asleep, I could hear my father whispering privately to my mother that we were reaching the end of our endurance. This was his worry. He whispered this in Yiddish so Pawel and I could not overhear, but I had learned enough Yiddish by this point to understand his concern. I knew that what Korsarz said about the Yiddish language was not always so, because certainly there was nothing funny about my father’s apprehension, even in such a joyful language as Yiddish.

  Probably my father was right to be so concerned. We were reaching the end of our endurance. We could only hope that our will to live would outlast the Germans’ hold on our city.

  Our underground family received an unannounced visitor toward the end of June 1944, almost thirteen months into our confinement. Socha and Wroblewski arrived one day with a Ukrainian soldier, a young man who was the boyfriend of Socha’s sister-in-law. His name was Tola, and he did not look like the sinister Ukrainians I had been accustomed to seeing on the streets of the ghetto before we escaped into the sewer. I guessed he was in his early twenties. His face at first seemed kind and handsome. He had light blond hair, and he was both skinny and strong. Of course, we were all dreadfully skinny, after so long without the proper nutrition, but Tola was naturally skinny. He appeared rail thin but also powerful.

  We were so surprised to have a visitor at long last. I had not realized how hungry we were as a group to engage in conversation with someone new, to participate in a normal social exchange. To make a new acquaintance is a basic human interaction, and we had been without such an opportunity for so long.

  For his part, Tola must have been shocked at our appearance. Socha and Wroblewski saw us every day and so did not notice how emaciated and haggard we had become. We must have looked like the starved prisoners in the concentration camps, and for all we knew, a young man like Tola was not so hungry to make our acquaintance. Our clothes were tattered and worn, our bodies beaten down by the unnatural conditions. To his credit, Tola did not remark about our unsightly condition. He simply made the appropriate greetings and attempted to adjust to his new surroundings.

  Very quickly, we learned Tola’s story. Like many Ukrainians, he had been fighting in the Russian army. Unfortunately, he was captured by the Germans and made a prisoner of war and forced by his captors to fight against his own countrymen. This was a famous German tactic, to turn their prisoners into traitors, and these were considered the lucky ones. The prisoners who did not join the German army were warehoused in camps that resembled the concentration camps, or they were simply killed.

  Tola would not fight against the Russians. He wore the German uniform for a short time until he managed to escape. Somehow, when he was in hiding, he met Socha’s sister-in-law and fell in love. Her name was Michalina. It was a dramatic romance, made even more dramatic because of the underlying danger and because Tola was a man without a country. The Germans would kill him for deserting, and the Russians would kill him for fighting for the other side. He had no place to turn. Klara and Halina were especially attracted to the romantic, forbidden elements of Tola’s story. They thought it would be a grand adventure, to help two young lovers survive their tragic circumstance so they could one day be together.

  It was Wanda Socha who suggested to her husband that he consider hiding Tola in the sewer along with his precious Jews. He was her sister’s boyfriend, after all, and he at least deserved the same chance as a group of Jews who had been strangers to their family. It would be nothing, she thought, for us to add another hideaway to our group, and Socha had no choice but to agree.

  Socha explained our situation to Tola. He described our Palace home, how we were living, and how we had built our own little society in our underground world. He m
ade it sound as though it were not so terrible, because to him it was not so terrible. Socha explained that he himself chose to spend many long hours with us in this place. He described our various personalities and told about the hen and her two chicks and the plays we liked to perform. He assured Tola that we would welcome him into our group and care for him as one of our own.

  Tola agreed that this would be a good place for him to hide until the Russians once again controlled the streets of Lvov and he could at last explain his situation to the authorities. Already the Russians had been moving farther and farther into the region, and it seemed from newspaper accounts that our persecution under the Germans would not last much longer. And so it was arranged. However, we did not know of these arrangements. Tola simply arrived in our midst without warning. We were shocked to see this stranger, certainly, but by this point we trusted Socha implicitly. If he told us to take this man into our company, we were only too happy to do so. And Tola made a fine first impression. He was agreeable and pleasant and grateful for the sanctuary we offered. Indeed, when he first crawled through the pipe into our chamber, it felt to all of us as though this Ukrainian soldier were a guest in our home.

  But the spirit of welcome left us almost as soon as Tola arrived. He could not get used to our dungeonlike surroundings. He could not understand how we could live in such a filthy place. He could not stand the mud, the stench, the cold, the rats. “You are like animals here,” he said. “And you have been here for thirteen months! I could not survive thirteen hours in this place.”

  However, Socha persuaded Tola to keep an open mind, and soon our sewer workers left to continue their rounds. Tola stayed behind, and we of course assumed he would become gradually accustomed to these surroundings as we had become gradually accustomed. But in this we were wrong. Tola could not last even one day. He could not rest. He became very agitated, almost claustrophobic. “How can you live here?” he kept saying. “It is impossible.” Remember, this was a man who had survived for several weeks in a German POW camp, where the conditions were unspeakable. That, he could endure; this, he could not.

  Tola became frantic and restless as his first day in our company wore on. Soon, he was telling us he had to leave, but my father did not think this was a good idea. He had not discussed this possibility with Socha, that Tola would not wish to remain in the sewer, but he did not think Socha wanted his prisoner of war wandering the pipes and tunnels of the sewer on his own. Certainly, he would be discovered if he tried to leave, just as the others had been discovered. For Tola’s sake, and for our sakes as well, he would have to remain, at least until Socha and Wroblewski arrived the next morning. At that point, Socha could determine an appropriate course of action.

  It was quietly decided that the men would take turns watching Tola, in four-hour shifts, to make certain he would not flee and possibly give away our location. Several times, Tola rushed to the open pipe and attempted to crawl his way through, until one of the men grabbed him by the legs and pulled him back toward our chamber. When this happened, another of the men would join in the capture, because the young soldier was too strong for only one man to pin down. With each failed escape, Tola became more and more agitated, more and more difficult. He became like a madman.

  There would be little sleep for any of us on this night, there was so much agitation and difficulty in our small chamber. It is a wonder to me that those long hours passed at all, such was the slow anguish of Tola’s first night among our group, until finally Socha and Wroblewski arrived the next morning. Socha was startled to hear about the trouble his soldier had caused. My father explained the situation, and Tola did not dispute his account. Tola said he could not stay here, but Socha said he now had no choice. He said he could not risk allowing Tola to return to the outside, that he could no longer trust Tola to keep quiet about our location or about the sewer workers’ conspiracy to conceal us. Tola assured Socha he would keep our secret, but Socha would not take the chance. He told the Ukrainian he had put our group in a predicament. At this, Tola’s agitation returned in full force. He had tried to reason with his girlfriend’s brother-in-law, but now he became hysterical. He flailed about our small chamber, yelling and screaming. We all feared his shouts would give us away. He quieted only when Socha drew his gun. “Shut up or I will shoot,” Socha said.

  At last, Tola was quiet.

  Socha crossed to where my father was sitting and gave him his gun. “Chiger,” he said, “you must watch this man. You cannot let him leave.” Then he produced a length of rope, which he wound around Tola’s hands to restrain him and restrict his movement. “This way, he cannot crawl,” Socha explained.

  Once again, Tola became a prisoner of war, only now he was being held by our underground sovereignty. Now the men in our group would be his guards, and they would resume their four-hour shifts behind the barrel of Socha’s gun until we were liberated or until Socha came up with another plan. We meant this young soldier no harm, of course, but at the same time we could not allow him to threaten our survival.

  And so began the unexpected final chapter of our time in the sewer. A new character who had not been a part of our story was now placed in a central role. I did not like that this man had come to stay with us. I did not like that the camaraderie of our group was now upset. After a year and more in our underground Palace, we had become comfortable with one another and established in our routines. Now, with Tola, we could not be as we had been before. I could not sit with my father and study my letters. We could not sit in the evening and perform one of my father’s plays or satires. We could not be ourselves.

  Even such a simple thing as going to the bathroom was disturbed by Tola’s presence. Always, we had enjoyed only the illusion of privacy, but now with this stranger among us we could not relieve ourselves without feeling self-conscious. I do not think, for example, that any of us ever relieved ourselves when Socha and Wroblewski came to visit. We went only when we were alone. This was a curious thing, and yet we had developed such an intimacy among our group that this was how we maintained our civility. We developed our own bathroom routines, our own personalities, when we had to use the chamber pot. Some of us were quick. Some of us took our time. Me, I liked to sit and think. Sometimes I would sit so long that my mother would call out to me from the shadows to make sure I was okay. Now, however, we were all very quick to do our business, and when Tola needed to use the bathroom, we were all a little bit embarrassed. It was like a violation. Now even the illusion of privacy was no more.

  Pawel, too, was disturbed by Tola’s presence, only he did not care so much about having to use the bathroom. He cared about Tola’s disposition, which grew more and more angry each hour he remained with us. Tola would kick at the rats that had become Pawel’s friends. He was more sour and disagreeable than Weiss and his cronies had ever been, and we had not seen those men for nearly a year. Pawel could sense this soldier’s foul demeanor and the bad temper he had brought with him into our small chamber. We had lived a long time in our self-contained little world, with our eccentricities and personalities, but somehow we had managed to get along. We had learned to coexist.

  With this hostile stranger among us, a virtual prisoner, I realized for the first time that we were prisoners, too. I had not thought of our circumstance in just this way until just this moment. Tola, he could not go anywhere. His hands were tied and he was held at gunpoint, against his will. And the rest of us, we could not go anywhere, either. Our hands were not tied and we were not being held at gunpoint, but we were prisoners just the same. We, too, were being held against our will.

  I did not think to share this observation with my father and the others. I did not think anyone would appreciate the observations of an eight-year-old girl. Instead, I kept quiet and silently prayed that things could go back to how they were. Whether I was praying that things could go back to how they were before the war, before the initial Soviet occupation, before the German occupation, before our time in the ghetto, before the final liq
uidation, before our confinement in the sewer, or before Tola’s arrival had upset the fine balance of the life we had finally made, I could not say. I was not self-aware enough to know the full extent of my deepest thoughts, only that I, too, was restless, a prisoner of my own unfortunate circumstance.

  Nine

  LIBERATION

  One day in July, Socha arrived in our chamber with a report that the Russians had captured the city of Tarnopol, less than a hundred kilometers east of where we were sitting. We were overjoyed at this, because it meant the Germans were indeed retreating, confirming the accounts my father and the others had been reading in the newspapers. For over a year, we had been praying for this, dreaming about it, willing it so. We thought now it would be only a few days more before we, too, were liberated. Such was the momentum of the Russian army, and such was the strength of our fervent hope. But our happiness was short-lived, because only two days later Socha was back with a revised report. This time, it was revealed that the Germans had recaptured Tarnopol. It was a dispiriting turn. Furthermore, we learned that while the city had briefly been in Soviet hands, hundreds of Jews who had been in hiding came out from their shelters and started to celebrate. When the Germans regained control, these hundreds of Jews were swiftly exterminated.

  To experience the joyful prospect of liberation and then to have it suddenly revoked struck us as particularly cruel at a time when we were particularly vulnerable to such cruelty. The turnabout reminded me of the cat-and-mouse games the ghetto commander Grzymek used to play with my father, telling him first he was free and then he was not free. The news played with our emotions, and already we were in a fragile state. The arrival of the prisoner Tola had upset the fine balance of our underground community, and our will to live was slowly leaking from our pores. Probably we saw ourselves through Tola’s disbelieving eyes, and the picture that came back was one of weakness and desperation. What had once been our shared strength was now, to someone like Tola, merely stubbornness and leftover will. We had made the best of a bad situation, this was true, but more and more it seemed that the bad situation would prevail. And so to have this bulletin of such great elation be so quickly defl ated with a bulletin of such great tragedy was especially damaging to our spirits.