In the Sewers of Lvov (16 page)

Despite her instinctive reluctance, she took up her new responsibilities with such enthusiasm that she even went so far as to buy a small peddler’s pushcart, which she set up in the town square. If she was going to be buying so much produce, she might as well get it wholesale and try to make a profit. But she had further obligations. On Fridays, Socha collected the group’s dirty laundry and brought it home for Wanda to boil and dry over the weekend.

* * *

After their lunch, everyone in the storm basin found something to occupy them during the afternoon, until they were summoned together again for the evening meal. After dinner there was further conversation and philosophizing. They would return to the newspapers, for any scrap of news that had been missed earlier and invariably find something worth arguing about. Chiger, in particular was especially interested in the political and military developments that were being played out above their heads. He discovered a willing and stimulating sparring partner in Halina Wind, who devoured the papers almost as avidly as Chiger, and her opinions were equally well informed. Halina had had the benefit of a good education. Her father had been a rabbi in Turka, where she had been brought up in an educated, perhaps even intellectual home.

They were the only ones who had finished high school. In fact, Chiger had attended the Lvov university. He’d attracted some notoriety in his youth because he had enrolled to study medicine in an institution that barred Jews from that faculty. In the event, he graduated with a master’s degree in history and went to work for the Ministry of Sport where he became something of a local celebrity. Halina was equally proud of her own education. The two of them often caused the others to laugh amongst themselves, as they argued over who had had the better education, read the most books, or had a better understanding of politics … The men found Halina and her opinions constantly amusing. The women less so.

For most of the group, intellectual pursuits seemed at times a little frivolous. Margulies’s notion was ‘activity, constant activity’ as the solution to anxiety. He had not ceased his forays up to the street. Indeed, he had become even more bold. As the ghetto area had been virtually demolished, except for some half-dozen workers’ cottages that still remain today, there was no profit in trying to explore that area. Always waiting until nightfall before emerging, Margulies found safe exits in and around the area in which they were situated. During September he sometimes managed to climb the walls of the monastery and steal apples from the orchard. During one of these midnight
rambles, Margulies was stopped by some Ukrainian militia.

‘What are you doing here?’ they demanded.

‘I was hiding in the bombed out buildings.’

There were two of them, both with rifles. Margulies had slipped his pistol into his boot, but to get to it he had to lift the leg of his trousers. He was certain he would be shot on the spot before he got anywhere near his gun.

‘Do you have any money?’

‘I don’t have nothing.’

Then a third militiaman arrived and declared that Margulies would have to be taken to the Commissariat.

‘Why? What would you get, medals? Do you want medals?’ asked Margulies.

Then a fourth militiaman arrived, this time carrying a powerful torch which he shone straight into Margulies’s face. Margulies now couldn’t see anything at all. The man looked at him and spoke in Ukrainian.

‘Let him go. I know him well.’

Margulies didn’t recognize the voice and had no idea who the man was. When he took away the torch, the four men were striding off in the opposite direction.

‘I have no idea who he was. I never saw his face,’ Margulies reflected.

In the dead of night, Margulies walked across the city towards some of the factories that had employed Jews before the liquidation. He had had some friends there once. He found the caretaker and chatted with him casually. Margulies felt that this was someone he could trust. He learnt that the factory still employed Jews who were marched every morning as a ‘brigade’ from the Janowska camp and at the end of the day’s work were marched back again.

During September, the war against Germany took a number of dramatic turns. On Italy’s Mediterranean shores, 1400 kilometres south-west of Lvov, British and Canadian troops had landed at Reggio and had begun the Italian Campaign. Five days later, on 8 September, the Italian armed forces surrendered. On 9 September, American forces landed at Solerno, German troops occupied Rome and Hitler announced his commitment to the defence of Italian fascism. As German forces in Italy came under growing strain, their commanders’ reports in the east seemed sprinkled with the same word: retreat, retreat.

The Soviet summer offensive had generated a powerful momentum. Soviet armies recaptured Kharkov 800 kilometres east of Lvov, and the entire Donetz Basin down to the shores of the Sea of Azov. By 25 September, the city of Smolensk, 400 kilometres south-west of Moscow, was recaptured, as was Bryansk another 200 kilometres to the south. In the same offensive, launched from deep within the Russian heartland, Soviet troops seemed to be racing towards the great city of Kiev, capital of the Ukraine. The tide seemed to have turned. Some fragments of these events reached the eleven in the storm basin, and it seemed that once Kiev had fallen, liberation would soon follow.

Margulies had not given up on his expeditions to the street. As news of Soviet victories filtered down to them via Socha, he seemed to take greater risks than before. Not long after the encounter with the Ukrainian militia, he and Chaskiel had slipped out to see what was left to plunder from the old Julag. It was not yet nightfall and a brigade of labourers from the Janowska camp was still hard at work. The entire district had
been reduced to rubble. Scattered over a field of shattered masonry, thin relics stooped over heavy stones which they lifted or dragged across the ground to the meaningless piles that had been designated at various points. Margulies looked out across the scene and knew there was nothing left here. But he was not ready to give up the search elsewhere. There might be something worth taking in some of the buildings nearby.

Tens of thousands of the men of Lvov had been sent to Germany to take up obligatory work service. Their wives laboured during the day in local factories, which meant that many homes were left unoccupied. Watched by Ukrainian guards from a distance, Margulies and Chaskiel moved through the field of labourers to the buildings along the perimeter. They slipped inside and moved quietly down the empty corridors, testing the doors as they went. They managed to slip into one or two empty rooms and emerged with a few bottles of liquor.

By the time they were in the street again, the scene had changed. They climbed to the brow of a small heap of rubble while behind them a group of noisy children played ‘knuckles’ in a crater at the foot of the hill. All across the open space, men were abandoning their loads and slowly shuffling towards the foreman, in preparation for the march back up the Janowska Road. Margulies and Chaskiel watched the brigade being counted and realized they were in danger of being the only figures left on the landscape. If they didn’t get across the field of rubble quickly, they would be obvious targets. They began to crunch their way towards the brigade, now some way off in the distance. Suddenly they were stopped by a Ukrainian voice.

‘Hella, hella, hella!’ A militiaman was bearing down on them. ‘Where are you going?’

‘There – to join the group, the demolition group – lifting stones. We have to go back to the camp …’

‘You’re late!’ the Ukrainian informed them.

‘Well, you know we don’t have a watch – of course we’re late,’ replied Margulies.

He had hoped to humour the militiaman, and for a moment it worked. The man turned and began to walk away. Then suddenly
he rounded on them and this time he would not be so easily discouraged.

‘Maybe you are partisans.’ He had decided to make an arrest. Margulies reached down into his pocket and removed one of the bottles of liquor they had just stolen.

‘Oh, so now you’re trying to bribe me.’

Chaskiel had been watching Margulies the whole while, and had removed a short piece of wood that he carried as a club. The Ukrainian had no warning. Chaskiel swung the club into the man’s throat and sent him reeling backwards. Margulies, meanwhile, had removed a hammer he had carried with him from the sewer. As the wounded militiaman staggered under the first blow, Margulies swung the hammer into the back of his head and brought the man down. ‘He had no chance to live, not with a blow like that,’ Margulies claimed afterwards.

He had fallen into some tall grass that hid him from view. Margulies and Chaskiel stood over the body ready to strike again, waiting. Over the hill of rubble the sound of children playing continued uninterrupted. The hammer was slipped back into Margulies’s pocket and the two of them moved away from the spot. They began running and, though no one had seen the militiaman fall, some bystanders had begun to point at the two men. Margulies had got some way ahead of Chaskiel when he heard his friend cry out. He looked around and saw him struggling in the grip of some people who had decided to give chase. Margulies had no idea whether the dead man had been discovered, perhaps Chaskiel had just been unlucky. The children had abandoned their game and had gathered round, watching with mute glee, as if the Jew were some animal to be played with. Margulies had to help him: ‘It was getting late, he was about to be handed over to the Gestapo. He would have been shot on the spot.’

Margulies took off towards the brigade and ran up to the foreman, whom he described: ‘He was a capo – a good capo. He came from Catowice and spoke German.’ Although the Germans still employed the Jewish police inside the Janowska camp. Margulies had no way of knowing whether to trust him. He just took a chance and described what had happened.

‘Listen, try and save him. Go to those people and tell them he is one of yours.’

The capo agreed but Margulies held him back a moment.

‘Hit him!’ Margulies said.

‘What?’

‘Hit him – hard! …’

The capo understood. He still wore the peaked cap and black armband which had invested the Jewish police with such awesome authority in the past. He confronted poor Chaskiel, who was stumbling under the grip of the crowd, and launched into him with a tirade of abuse. Then he leaned back and hit Chaskiel as hard as he could. The crowd was quite stunned by the capo’s ruthlessness. He bawled at Chaskiel: ‘Where have you been, you … you …? Were you lost? What happened to you?’

The crowd loosened their grip and Chaskiel fell to the ground. ‘It’s all right, he comes with us …’ The capo hauled him to his feet and marched Chaskiel, stumbling across the rubble, towards the brigade. Chaskiel found himself thrown into the centre of the phalanx where he was surrounded by nameless faces who shuffled close beside him at the capo’s orders. While all eyes had been upon the struggle over Chaskiel, Margulies had slipped away from the open landscape towards a safe building on the far side. From there he watched Chaskiel, barely sensible, marching with the others towards the Janowska Road.

When Margulies had returned to the storm basin, he recounted what had happened to their colleague: ‘He’s safe. He can look after himself. When they march back tomorrow, I will go fetch him.’

The others could scarcely believe Korsarz’s account and they were less confident that they would see Chaskiel again. But the following evening, Margulies slipped back up to the street and made his way to the field of rubble. There he saw Orenbach, toiling away over the stones. Margulies signalled to him to edge his way towards the perimeter. Chaskiel did what he was told, while the Ukrainian police looked on. After another signal from Margulies, Chaskiel dropped his load and moved quickly out of
sight. Margulies joined him behind a mound of rubble, where they waited for nightfall.

Back in the storm basin, Chaskiel could say little about his experience. He had been looked after by the men in the brigade and given food and water. He had seen one or two familiar faces behind the wire, but could think of no names. He was still shocked by whatever he had seen.

At one point in his account, Chiger described a romance that had developed and begun to flourish between Korsarz and Klara. Socha also would pass comment, confidently predicting that a marriage would come of the attachment. None had realized that the relationship had begun months ago, during the last few days before the liquidation. They also had no idea of the depth of feeling that had developed inside the hardy black-marketeer. Klara had always been the quiet one of the group. Prepared to get her head down and work her way through the ordeal, rather than become absorbed in the group’s arguments. But that wasn’t to say that she had no time for her own thoughts. The problem was that she had too much time. Over and over she remembered the scene in Weiss’s room between Manya and herself before they were parted.

I didn’t know what to do. I felt selfish, because I had run away and left her. But I knew for sure that if I’d stayed with her I’d be dead. I just didn’t believe any of those stories they were saying about us all going to have a good life … I knew it wasn’t true at the time. Only it was all at the last moment, the Germans were throwing people on to the lorries, so …

Margulies would listen to Klara talk about Manya, wondering what had happened to her. There seemed no way of dispelling her guilt. She would constantly reflect on her parting with her sister: That was the most difficult thing I ever did. I was so upset about it because I left her behind and she could have been alive today. He was pulling me one way and she was pulling another … I had no choice. To die with her or try to live.’

Margulies was not the sort of person to sit down with Klara and
try and talk her through it. He had no words that might have made things any easier. Instead, he decided to do something. The idea had been formulating inside him for some time and Chaskiel’s recent experience seemed to remove any doubts. He told Klara he would discover what had happened to Manya. According to Klara: ‘So one day, he decided to go out. I had no idea how he was going to do it, because Jews were non-existent up there. The ghetto was gone, everyone was in the Janowska camp. Anyway he went out, and I thought, that’s it – we will never see him again.’