In the Sewers of Lvov (13 page)

But then suddenly one of Weiss’s colleagues rose to his feet, holding a pistol in his hand.

‘Stop that crying. Shut up, or we will shoot you!’

Chiger froze with terror. Paulina took hold of her two children and held them to her. The eldest recalled the scene.

‘If you cry, we will kill you. You cannot cry here.’ The words
became etched on Kristina’s memory. Pawel had probably not understood; the rest of the group understood perfectly. Paulina did what she could to comfort her son, while Chiger said nothing for the moment, and waited for Socha’s return.

The next day, as the sewer workers were preparing to leave, having delivered the food, Chiger slipped Socha the week’s money. Rolled up inside was a brief note. It described the threat to Pawel’s life and Chiger’s fears about Weiss and his friends. As Socha departed there was a signal from Chiger that meant there was something for him inside the roll of money. An hour later, they heard the familiar grunts and shuffles of Socha and Wroblewski making their way back towards them down the narrow pipe. When they emerged the sewer workers immediately confronted Weiss.

‘Hand over your weapons,’ Socha demanded. Weiss was taken completely by surprise. He glanced across at Chiger and the others and moving very slowly, surrendered his pistol.

‘Now listen very carefully. If any harm comes to the Chigers, we’ll kill you. The only obligation I have is to protect these people,’ he said waving his pistol at the Chigers. ‘Everyone else is lucky to be here. Does everyone understand that?’

The sudden confrontation completely shattered any illusion that Weiss’s flattery had purchased any goodwill with Socha. He was tactically and literally disarmed. Weiss got to his feet and made deep and profound apologies to everyone and claimed they had never intended to threaten Pawel’s life. He swore that nothing like it would happen again. But in the silence that followed Socha’s departure, the abyss yawned even wider.

It must have been clear to most of them that reconciliation could, at best, be only cosmetic. Fear and suspicion were now rampant. Margulies, Berestycki and most of the others tried to remain apart from the dispute, preferring to concentrate on the business of survival. But for Weiss, his situation was now virtually untenable. He found support from just four friends; the Orenbach brothers, Halina and Shulim Weinberg. Their whispers became more furtive, their conspiracies appeared more sinister. Chiger was convinced they were planning an attack on
his family, destroying their security and endangering everyone. On the other hand, Weiss and Weinberg, being without money, were probably equally anxious that Chiger might simply refuse to support them any longer, assume the leadership of the group and banish those that could not pay their way. (One of the Orenbach brothers did have money, but he appears to have kept this from everyone.) Whichever way Weiss chose to look at it, the confrontation with Socha had unquestionably strengthened Chiger’s position. From his perspective, it must have been the turning point. ‘Now that they didn’t have their guns, what could they do?’ Paulina recalled.

Chiger clearly enjoyed Socha’s support and perhaps under those circumstances Weiss imagined it was only a matter of time before Chiger tried to assert himself. But there were other elements to the equation. Weiss’s mother was ill. She had been infested with lice before they had entered the sewers, was asthmatic and terribly weak. The cold, damp conditions only made her health worse. Weiss doubtless calculated that, if anything ever happened to him, the others would take care of a sick elderly woman.

Shulim Weinberg may have had similar thoughts. He and his wife shared a secret they had kept from everyone else. There wasn’t the slightest doubt in their minds that if it had been commonly known that Genia was pregnant, they would never have been selected to go with Socha. It’s clear that Weinberg was deeply loyal to Weiss but in the light of the hostility between Chiger and Weiss’s clique, he must have worried about how to protect Genia. For the Orenbach brothers, the problem was simply one of allegiancies and they had been committed to Weiss from the start. Very little is known about Itzek and Chaskiel, except that they were both in business and had come from the town of Radzyn.

In the atmosphere of growing uncertainty, Weiss and the three men closest to him decided to act. It is impossible to imagine that they came to their decision easily or without knowing the probable consequences. They had decided to leave the sewers and take their chances on the street. Under the greatest secrecy, they
sought the opinions of others. According to Margulies, ‘Weiss did not trust me. He wouldn’t talk to me. Instead he spoke with Berestycki and asked him to ask me if I would go with them. I said no and Berestycki said no.’ Jacob was plied and cajoled but with no success, and when it was clear he wouldn’t leave, Chaskiel Orenbach changed his mind.

‘Come on, we’re all going to die anyway. They’re dead already,’ Weiss argued.

Chaskiel said no. He would stay. It seems Weiss had not intended to include Halina in his plans. She would be left, along with his mother, to get on with the rest of the group. Nothing was said to Chiger or Socha in case they tried to prevent their escape. Finally the day came. Their announcement came as a complete surprise to Chiger, but they argued that the conditions had got the better of them. According to Chiger, Weiss explained: ‘The wild strawberries will be out and I want to taste them again.’

They planned to go down to the Peltwa and simply follow it to where it emerged above ground. Having calculated the risks, Shulim had decided his wife would be safer in the sewer, and said goodbye. What words passed between the two Orenbach brothers are gone forever and according to Chiger, Weiss did not speak to his mother at all. ‘What could she do? When the men had gone, she and Halina were abandoned. Especially Halina. She sat there next to Mrs Weiss. It was so sad.’

When Socha heard the news he cursed the men who had fled. He knew they had no chance, and when they were captured, what then? Margulies understood the situation perfectly. No matter how resolved they were to keep silent, they would not last long.

‘Once the Germans have you, you will talk. There’s no question. They will beat you and torture you. Who could resist?’

In the days and weeks that followed Weiss’s departure there was increased vigilance for any sign of intruders. Socha and Wroblewski took greater precautions entering the sewers, using a different manhole each day. ‘Korsarz’ Margulies and Chaskiel Orenbach continued to make quick forays up to the barrack to fetch more material: clothing, another kerosine stove, a bucket for making soup.

They also brought back reports of how the rest of the ghetto was being systematically stripped of every possible durable item that could be carried, pushed or thrown on to the back of a cart. Eiderdowns, beds, blankets, tables and chairs, everything. They watched as entire families carried out suitcases filled with loot, while Ukrainian police stood guard.

Meanwhile, Korsarz saw teams of labourers, probably from the Janowska camp, slowly demolishing the empty buildings with their bare hands. It was as though the ghetto was not only being stripped bare, but that all evidence of their existence was being expunged – and it was being carried out in the most callous fashion. There were no signs of any special activity, no evidence that the SS or Ukrainian militia were combing the buildings for anyone in hiding. Perhaps Weiss’s flight had gone completely unnoticed. Perhaps they had made it.

On that particular trip to the barrack, one of them absent-mindedly kicked a stone, which echoed across the empty room and caused a Ukrainian militiaman to stare across in their direction. ‘Each time I came up, I said to myself, this is the last time. Never again,’ declared Margulies. The guard caught sight of Orenbach and the two of them made straight for the entrance
to the cellar. They got safely into the sewer system and were not pursued. Nevertheless, it was obvious that these expeditions would have to cease. Soon the place would be cleaned out and the building itself demolished.

On their next visit, they found that the slab in Weiss’s floor had been fixed solid, probably by boards that had been nailed across it. To attempt to force their way through would have been suicidal. But Margulies, determined to maintain contact with the outside world, decided to find another way. He took the most obvious course, which was to follow the Peltwa down the chamber until it emerged at ground level. Margulies remembers it was still light when he emerged at about five in the evening. He stepped out into the world beyond the old ghetto boundary, but was immediately stopped in his tracks by what he saw before him. There, sprawled on the ground, no more than a few yards from the opening, were the bodies of Weiss, Shulim Weinberg and Itzek Orenbach. It appeared they had been shot the very moment they had emerged.

It was then more than five weeks since the liquidation and the sight of three Jews emerging from the sewers must have been a story the executioners told with some relish: ‘Imagine being down in the sewers all that time!’ It’s possible that they linked the incident with the sighting of Chaskiel Orenbach in the barrack and perhaps even suspected that there were others still hidden somewhere in the labyrinthine tunnels. Socha was fairly well tuned to all the rumours and reported whatever he heard.

Margulies dragged each of the bodies to the river’s edge and pushed them, one by one, into the current. Old Mrs Weiss was comforted by Paulina. Chaskiel Orenbach’s reaction is not recalled, but, according to Chiger, Genia Weinberg took the news with a stony silence, but later wept quietly with Halina. A bond had developed between the young girl and this beautiful and tragic woman. She had already lost two children to the Nazis. All she had now was the memory of her third child, a daughter, whom she had given to Ukrainians to look after, and the secret baby that was still growing inside her.

There is a divergence between the separate accounts of the
death of Weinberg. Mrs Weinberg’s account claims that her husband met his death fetching water: ‘Two men had gone for drinking water. One fell in and was pulled along by the current and never returned.’

However, Chiger’s account, corroborated by Paulina, their daughter Kristina, Margulies and Klara, is clear Weinberg perished with Weiss at the mouth of the Peltwa, no more than five weeks into their ordeal.

When the news was broken to Socha he gave some intimation that he had already heard the news from another quarter. His only positive response was to inform Chiger, ‘You are the leader now.’ Halina, now abandoned, approached Chiger and asked if she might ‘join his group’, she wanted his protection. She confessed, ‘All I have is one 20-zloty note. Nothing else …’

There was no doubt about letting her stay, but her asking to ‘join’ seemed to indicate that the gap between Weiss and the others had been considerable. Chiger resolved that he would never allow factions to develop. From his perspective, Weiss’s departure had meant that the threat to his family was gone. It was sad that he was dead, but, ‘We could never have survived with Weiss. It had been impossible.’ Chiger was philosophical about the episode. He felt that it had a unifying effect on the group, committing them all to greater efforts towards their common welfare.

The tragedies that befell Weiss and his companions came at a time when the fifteen that had remained were finding their environment increasingly dangerous. The daily routine of collecting water was an exhausting and difficult exercise at the best of times. It was now fraught with danger, as the sewers had become underground cataracts. Late June and early July marked the season of the annual summer rains: wild electric storms, coupled with massive down-pours that quickly filled the gutters and the storm pipes under the streets. The rains completely transformed the sewers into chambers that thundered with the noise of the vast quantities of water that rushed towards the Peltwa. The river rose above its banks, flooding the ledges to a height of two feet.

Not only was the main chamber then impassable, but also travelling down any of the network of tunnels had become a treacherous exercise. ‘Torrents of water would cascade through the pipes and we were in constant danger of being carried away,’ wrote Chiger.

Once the Peltwa had become swamped, water flowed back in the opposite direction, creating a backlog of water, which eventually filled the system. Pipes that normally carried water away swiftly simply didn’t work, the system was flooded and they became trapped, for up to twenty-four hours, unable to leave the cavern.

With each new storm, the waters in the system brought with them debris and silt from the streets above. This clogged up some of the tunnels they used each day, and it had to be cleared away. It was hard, back-breaking work, but it simply had to be done. One morning, Chiger and Berestycki returned from ‘digging and clearing away the mud and slime at the end of our tunnel’. They collapsed exhausted from their labours and looked forward to a rest while they awaited Socha’s arrival. Then Chiger realized it was his turn to fetch the water, but before he could get to his feet, Kuba was up and had volunteered to go in his place. His brother-in-law was a delightful character; he may not have been the most agile of men, but he had about him a distinguished air, an elegance which earned him great respect. Despite his cultivated manners, he never avoided rolling up his sleeves and pitching in with some of the most loathsome tasks.

‘Go to Pepa. She is alone with the children and needs your company. I’ll fetch the water,’ he said.

Outside, the rain had begun to fall gently. As Kuba prepared to go, Margulies took Chiger to one side. ‘I said to Chiger, “Don’t send him,”’ recalled Margulies. ‘But Kuba used to feel guilty about not doing enough work and he would say, “It is my turn to fetch the water.”’

Kuba and Orenbach set off together with the empty containers. While they were away, the rain turned into a shower and they could hear the waters begin to thunder through the pipes. Margulies continued, ‘I would always give him a lecture, “if it
rains, the tunnel will fill and it will lift you up and you will be carried forward – remember the floor is so slimy.”’