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Q&A
The Darkest Days


Photo: cave markings
CAVE MARKINGS: Caver Chris Nicola finds written evidence of the Priest's
Grotto survivors.

In the spring of 1944, a group of 38 Ukrainian Jews emerged weak and
jaundiced from a cave they'd used for nearly a year to escape the
horrors of the Holocaust. Nearly fifty years later, one caver began his
quest to bring their story of survival to life. By Carey Ostergard

In 1993, veteran caver Chris Nicola became one of the first Americans to
explore Ukraine's famous Gypsum Giant cave systems. While there, during
an expedition into the tenth longest cave in the world, his team came
across two partially intact stone walls and other signs of habitation.
Local residents, who revere the Gypsum Giants as national treasures,
told Nicola that a group of Ukrainian Jews spent months in the cave
evading the horrors of the Holocaust. No one seemed to know who had
survived, however, and some questioned whether any had seen daylight
again. Fascinated, Nicola grew determined to learn how people with no
prior caving experience or specialized equipment were able to live in
such a hostile environment for so long.

Ten years later, after an extensive search, Nicola located six of the
cave survivors, most of them members of the extended Stermer family. The
story they told was even more remarkable than the legend Nicola had
heard while in the Ukraine, involving not one cave hideout, but two, and
nearly two years spent underground. "There may not be another story like
this," explains Michlean Amir, reference archivist of the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. "Such a large group of
people avoided digging their own graves or being shipped off to
concentration camps by successfully utilizing a natural phenomenon."

Last July, Nicola and writer-photographer Peter Lane Taylor traveled
7,000 miles to western Ukraine on assignment for Adventure to learn how
the group, which numbered 38 in all, was able to survive below ground
for nearly two years. Their first stop was Verteba, a well-known tourist
cave where the families spent their first six months. There, the Jews
struggled to find enough water and suffered from the toxic buildup of
smoke from their cooking fire. Then on May 5, 1943, after narrowly
avoiding capture at the hands of the Gestapo, the families relocated to
a previously unexplored cave located beneath land owned by a local
parish priest. It was called Popowa Yama, or Priest's Grotto, and it
would be the Jews refuge from the Holocaust for the next 344 days.

By piecing together interviews with the survivors and artifacts they
found while in Ukraine, Nicola and Taylor were able to develop a clear
picture of the Jews underground life. The fruits of their findings
appear in this month's issue. Below, Adventure asks Nicola about
uncovering this forgotten story of courage, loyalty, and survival.

We have all heard extraordinary Holocaust survival stories, what about
this story makes it so unique?
It was the sheer magnitude of their survival and how they survived
together. In my opinion, the western Ukraine was the worst place on
Earth for Jews to live during World War II. Hitler was on one border
sending in troops whose sole purpose was to eliminate all Jews, and
Stalin was on the other enforcing a scorched earth policy by burning
everything that couldn't be moved. The chance of a Jewish person
surviving at all was less than 5 percent. But what made this story
different, and what is rarely seen in any Holocaust survival story, is
how these families stayed virtually intact.

How did you get in touch with the survivors?
After ten years of extensive research and a lot of dead ends, I came
across a number of sophisticated Internet search sites for the Jewish
community, used by thousands of Jews to look for missing relatives. I
thought if I put the right words on my own Web site
[www.uaycef.org]—such as "cave" and "grotto"—then someone searching
would pick up on them. Sure enough, in 2002, I got an e-mail late at
night and couldn't believe my eyes. It was a message from the son-in-law
of Sol Wexler. He said his father-in-law survived the Holocaust by
hiding in a cave. I was so excited—I was afraid to even touch the print
key in case I were to accidentally erase it. I calmed down, responded,
and got to meet Sol Wexler. He eventually led me to the others.

After you met them, what did it take to organize an expedition?
We interviewed the survivors extensively and worked closely with the
Ukrainian caving community to arm ourselves with as much information as
possible. Our idea was to retrace the exact routes the families took
from the first cave [where they were ambushed by the Nazis after six
months], through their flight into the woods, and then finally to the
sinkhole and Priest's Grotto—their home for the next year. At one point
we even ended up on an ox cart on the same road they followed.

It was amazing, because after hearing the story I was able to recognize
special things I'd missed before. For instance, one of the survivors,
only four years old at the time, said she remembers playing with a
bright, shining crystal in the cave. One of the largest crystals in the
world is close to their campsite inside Priest's Grotto, and chunks of
it will sometimes fall to the ground. When we saw the crystal, we
realized that that was where she used to play.

What other artifacts did you see differently after you'd heard the
survivors' story?
The millstone really struck me. I am in my 50s but pretty strong, and I
couldn't even move it. Yet Nissel Stermer carried it on his back for
three or four miles. That millstone was their life. They used it to
grind grain to make bread, which was the main part of their diet. Nissel
must have gotten a lot of strength from his family. I think it's like
the stories about mothers, full of adrenaline, gaining superhuman
strength to lift cars or bend metal to save their children. Nissel knew
this millstone would save his entire family. That hit me like a brick wall.

Unlike the families, who knew nothing about caves, you are an
experienced caver. What do you think were the greatest obstacles to
their survival?
Cavers wear specialized clothing. Without it, hypothermia is always a
problem. When the families worked, cut wood, or leveled the ground, they
would sweat. As the sweat evaporated, their bodies cooled down.
Ironically, their hard work worked against them and could have put them
in a hypothermic state. They also had to contend with bats, a source of
disease); malnutrition; smoke from their cooking fire contaminating
water sources; and getting lost in the dark labyrinth. The smoke in
particular was very dangerous. The four-year-old girl almost died from
smoke inhalation in the first cave due to poor ventilation. The Jews had
no choice but to learn to adapt quickly and along the way developed some
absolutely ingenious ways to overcome these hardships.

Can you give some examples?
The first cave was horrific, but they were smart enough to build a
spectacular escape exit. They dug up through a soft spot in the ceiling
and enforced and camouflaged a hatch so farmers wouldn't find it or fall
through. It saved their lives. In the second cave, which was much more
suitable for living, they set up designated areas for cooking and
sleeping, they used the natural ventilation system of the cave and built
walls to channel the smoke away from other areas. The families also had
an elaborate password system for the men who would go out of the cave
for provisions. They had a good password and a bad password. The good
password meant everything was OK; the bad password meant an enemy was
forcing them into the cave. They had few candles, so light was limited
to three short periods each day. After enough time spent wandering in
the dark, they memorized the feel of the cave floor on their bare feet.
It was like directions in braille.

What artifacts did you find in the cave?
The cave was a time capsule. We found medicine bottles, dozens of shoes,
buttons, and other wonderful things that reflected their daily life. The
Jews left all of their personal effects in the first cave, so in
Priest's Grotto, all they had left were tools. When we were digging
around we came across a railroad spike. One of the survivors had told us
it was their most valuable tool because they used it to chisel stone. We
also found a key under one of the beds, where people today hide their
valuables. Peter and I think it was a key to one of the families' houses
and they were keeping it safe for when they could use it again one day.
But when the family finally came out of the cave, they never went back
to retrieve anything. They left it all in the cave in case they ever
needed to return.

What is it like to spend a substantial amount of time underground?
When you first go into a cave, you feel like you are in the smallest
area you have ever been in your life. Your heart pounds, and you sweat.
You have this horrible feeling of confinement. It is very important that
you get acclimated or you will get tunnel vision, which prevents you
from focusing on the important things such as hydration, staying warm,
and not getting lost. The families never got completely comfortable
because they knew they could be ambushed at any time. One survivor said
her heart stopped every time the men left to replenish supplies because
she never knew if they would see them again. Not seeing the sun for
almost a year was also very hard. But at that time, if they saw the sun,
it meant they were in great danger.

I've heard stories of Holocaust survivors always carrying food so they
will never have to be hungry again. Do the Priest's Grotto survivors
have similar habits?
One of the survivors admitted to doing just that, carrying food with
her. She explained that when they lived in the cave, they decided at one
point that only the men who ventured out for provisions would get extra
rations, so the others were constantly hungry. Also, one of the
survivor's children said that he noticed his father and two uncles have
16-foot ceilings in the entryways of their homes. I think that's
preferable to the small hole they entered feet-first for a year!

Do you think that people today could survive like the families did?
Modern-day people who sit at a computer all day? I would say no for two
reasons. First of all, these were hands-on people. They were carpenters
and merchants who had to provide for themselves, especially during the
occupation. They also grew up knowing the history of the caves in the
area and that ancient people lived in them, so they knew it could be
done. Secondly, the Stermer grandmother taught her family not to trust
authority. At one point, before they fled to the caves, all Jews were
told to meet in town and register. The grandmother decided they were not
going to go. The family worried but they obeyed the grandmother. That
day, in five separate towns, the Germans rounded up thousands of Jews
and many were never seen again—it had been a trap. I think people today
often don't give themselves the right to question authority.

Why isn't this story more widely known?
When the families first came out of the caves, they had no idea if they
were going to need to go back again, so they kept it a secret. When the
Stermers immigrated to Canada the secret left with them. Later, when
they were ready to tell their story, no one believed them. Their friends
who survived the same Holocaust had very different experiences. They had
numbers on their wrists and slept on bare wooden floors covered in lice.
The families in the cave slept on warm beds, rarely got sick, and still
had their family members with them when it was over. I can understand
why some people didn't believe them and why they never told the story again.

What have you gained from this experience?
Talking to survivors put a face on the horrors of the Holocaust. I
wasn't looking at 60-year-old black-and-white footage of death camps. I
was looking into the souls of people who survived it. Individuals get
lost in the large numbers. But looking into the eyes of the survivors,
and then looking into the eyes of their children and grandchildren, was
a real and very personal experience. When we came back from Ukraine in
July of 2003, Peter and I showed the survivors and their families the
slides we took inside the caves. At the end I put the picture of the
names they wrote on the wall of the cave. Everyone was speechless. Not
just the survivors, who had never mentioned this, but their children and
grandchildren. Many eyes filled up with tears. Right below the names was
the year 1943. For the first time, the children and grandchildren saw
concrete evidence of how their grandparents and parents lived and
survived in that cave. It was wonderful to give that back to them.

What is your next step in this story?
I think we owe it to the survivors and their families to protect the
caves and the artifacts there. It is history and a story with some
amazing lessons: family, loyalty, survival, and perseverance. We took
photographs of what we found and mapped their locations. But it should
all be preserved and cataloged by professionals to ensure that other
generations can see the amazing way they lived and struggled to stay
together.


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Off the Face of the Earth
IT WAS THE ONLY REFUGE THEY HAD LEFT. In 1942, as the Nazis intensified
their hold on Eastern Europe, several Jewish families disappeared into
the vast underground labyrinths of western Ukraine. The group ranged
from grandmothers to toddlers, and for the next year and a half they
lived, worked, ate, and slept in caves directly under the feet of those
who would send them to their deaths. Their story is one of history's
most remarkable epics of survival. And yet it was almost forgotten until
an American caver came across the remnants of their underground asylum
and set out to find the survivors of PRIEST'S GROTTO. By Peter Lane Taylor


Photo: the Stermer family
In 1947, three years after their underground ordeal, the Stermer family,
plus three new spouses, posed for a portrait. Back row, from left:
Shulim Stermer; Chana Richter; her husband, Joseph Richter; Yetta Katz;
her husband, Abe Katz; and Shlomo Stermer. Front row, from left:
Shulim's wife, Czarna; Esther Stermer; Henia Dodyk; and her daughter
Pepkale.

The night of October 12, 1942, when the Stermers finally ran for good,
was moonless and unseasonably cold. The roads in and out of the town of
Korolówka, deep in the farm country of western Ukraine, were empty of
the cart traffic that had peaked during the fall harvest days. After a
month of backbreaking work, most residents had already drifted off to sleep.

Zaida Stermer, his wife, Esther, and their six children dug up their
last remaining possessions from behind their house, loaded their wagons
with food and fuel, and, just before midnight, quietly fled into the
darkness. Traveling with them were nearly two dozen neighbors and
relatives, all fellow Jews who, like the Stermers, had so far survived a
year under the German occupation of their homeland. Their destination, a
large cave about five miles to the north, was their last hope of finding
refuge from the Nazis' intensifying roundups and mass executions of
Ukrainian Jews.


Map: Location of the grotto in Ukraine

The dirt track they rode on ended by a shallow sinkhole, where the
Stermers and their neighbors unloaded their carts, descended the slope,
and squeezed through the cave's narrow entrance. In their first hours
underground, the darkness around them must have seemed limitless.
Navigating with only candles and lanterns, they would have had little
depth perception and been able to see no more than a few feet. They made
their way to a natural alcove not far from the entrance and huddled in
the darkness. As the Stermers and the other families settled in for that
first night beneath the cold, damp earth, there was little in their past
to suggest that they were prepared for the ordeal ahead.

***
At the surface, Priest's Grotto is little more than a weedy hole in the
ground amid the endless wheat fields stretching across western Ukraine.
A short distance away, a low stand of hardwoods withers in the heat and
is the only sign of cover for miles around. With the exception of a
shallow, 90-foot-wide (27-meter-wide) depression in the flat ground,
there's nothing to indicate that one of the longest horizontal
labyrinths in the world lies just underfoot.

On the afternoon of July 18, 2003, I am standing with Chris Nicola, a
leading American caver, at the bottom of the sinkhole, sorting our gear.
It has taken us four days, traveling by jet, train, and finally ox cart,
to get here from New York City. It's tornado season on the Ukrainian
plateau, and overhead, the blue sky is rimmed with cumulus clouds
sheared off at the top. Our guides, 46-year-old Sergey Yepephanov and
24-year-old Sasha Zimels, are standing next to the rusting,
three-foot-wide metal entrance pipe that leads underground. They've been
ready to go for an hour.

I've come here to explore Priest's Grotto for the first time. For
Nicola, a 20-year veteran of major cave systems in the U.S. and Mexico,
our expedition is the culmination of a journey that began in 1993, soon
after the fall of the Soviet Union, when he became one of the first
Americans to explore Ukraine's famous Gypsum Giant cave systems. On that
trip he met dozens of local cavers eager to share news about their
recent discoveries. His last excursion was here, to the cave known
locally as Popowa Yama, or Priest's Grotto, because of its location on
land once owned by a parish priest.

At 77 miles (124 kilometers), Priest's Grotto is the second longest of
the Gypsum Giants and currently ranks as the tenth longest cave in the
world. Yet what Nicola found fascinating about the cave was located just
minutes inside the entrance: Soon after they'd set out, his group passed
two partially intact stone walls and other signs of habitation including
several old shoes, buttons, and a hand-chiseled millstone. Nicola's
guides from the local caving association told him the campsite had
already been there when their group first explored that portion of the
cave in the early 1960s.

"My guides called the site Khatki, or 'cottage,' " Nicola, now 53,
recalls. "They told me that it was settled by a group of local Jews who
had fled to the cave during the Holocaust. But that's where the story
ended. No one else could remember what had actually happened there, or
even if the Jews had survived the war at all."

Intrigued, Nicola began asking questions in the nearby towns. Western
Ukraine is a region where the Gypsum Giants have long been revered as
national landmarks and where uncomfortable memories of the Holocaust
still linger. Some local villagers told him that, after the Russian
troops pushed back the Germans in 1944, the survivors were seen
stumbling back to town, covered in thick, yellow mud. Others said the
Jews never saw daylight again.

On a later trip, Nicola learned more. "Rumors kept developing that at
least three families did survive," he says. But how had they lived in
such an inhospitable environment, Nicola wondered, and where were they
today? As a caver, he was awed by the courage and resourcefulness that
such long-term survival underground must have demanded. And he was
amazed that the story wasn't better known, even among Holocaust experts.

Back home in Queens, New York, Nicola intensified his efforts to locate
a Priest's Grotto survivor. He added information about the story to his
Web site on Ukrainian caves (www.uaycef.org), hoping that anyone
searching the Internet for the topic would contact him. For four years
he got no response. Then, one evening in December 2002, Nicola received
an e-mail from a man who said that his father-in-law was one of the
original Priest's Grotto survivors and was, in fact, living just a few
miles away in the Bronx. "I couldn't believe what I was seeing," Nicola
says. "I was afraid to even touch the print key in case I were to
accidentally erase it."

Seven months later we are standing outside the cave itself. It's 4:30
p.m. by the time Nicola and I are finished suiting up for entry. Our two
dozen duffels contain over 200 pounds (91 kilograms) of photographic and
survey gear and enough supplies to remain underground for three days.

As current president of the Ternopil Speleo Club, the local group that
has been pushing the exploration of this cave for 40 years, Sergey
Yepephanov is eager to show us his domain. He sticks his arm through the
steel plate at the top of the pipe, swings open the trapdoor as if he's
removing a manhole cover, and ushers us inside. (The club installed the
pipe several years ago to keep seasonal mudflows from clogging the
cave's entrance.)

Two dozen rickety metal rungs spot-welded to the inside of the pipe
disappear straight down into the darkness. There is just enough room for
each of us and our gear bags to squeeze down the rusty 30-foot
(nine-meter) shaft. When I reach the bottom, I can still make out
Sergey's silhouette at the top of the ladder, rimmed by bright, white
light. The rush of wind across the prairie is the last sound I hear
before he reaches through the small access port and slams the door shut
and everything goes black.

For the full story of how the Jewish families survived the Holocaust by
living below ground, pick up the June/July issue of Adventure.

"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire.
Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us)
off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give
them self determination under "play nice" rules.

Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you
for torturing the cat." Gunner

Gunner Asch wrote:


http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ad...406/q_n_a.html


Q&A
The Darkest Days


Photo: cave markings
CAVE MARKINGS: Caver Chris Nicola finds written evidence of the Priest's
Grotto survivors.

In the spring of 1944, a group of 38 Ukrainian Jews emerged weak and
jaundiced from a cave they'd used for nearly a year to escape the
horrors of the Holocaust. Nearly fifty years later, one caver began his
quest to bring their story of survival to life. By Carey Ostergard

In 1993, veteran caver Chris Nicola became one of the first Americans to
explore Ukraine's famous Gypsum Giant cave systems. While there, during
an expedition into the tenth longest cave in the world, his team came
across two partially intact stone walls and other signs of habitation.
Local residents, who revere the Gypsum Giants as national treasures,
told Nicola that a group of Ukrainian Jews spent months in the cave
evading the horrors of the Holocaust. No one seemed to know who had
survived, however, and some questioned whether any had seen daylight
again. Fascinated, Nicola grew determined to learn how people with no
prior caving experience or specialized equipment were able to live in
such a hostile environment for so long.

Ten years later, after an extensive search, Nicola located six of the
cave survivors, most of them members of the extended Stermer family. The
story they told was even more remarkable than the legend Nicola had
heard while in the Ukraine, involving not one cave hideout, but two, and
nearly two years spent underground. "There may not be another story like
this," explains Michlean Amir, reference archivist of the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. "Such a large group of
people avoided digging their own graves or being shipped off to
concentration camps by successfully utilizing a natural phenomenon."

Last July, Nicola and writer-photographer Peter Lane Taylor traveled
7,000 miles to western Ukraine on assignment for Adventure to learn how
the group, which numbered 38 in all, was able to survive below ground
for nearly two years. Their first stop was Verteba, a well-known tourist
cave where the families spent their first six months. There, the Jews
struggled to find enough water and suffered from the toxic buildup of
smoke from their cooking fire. Then on May 5, 1943, after narrowly
avoiding capture at the hands of the Gestapo, the families relocated to
a previously unexplored cave located beneath land owned by a local
parish priest. It was called Popowa Yama, or Priest's Grotto, and it
would be the Jews refuge from the Holocaust for the next 344 days.

By piecing together interviews with the survivors and artifacts they
found while in Ukraine, Nicola and Taylor were able to develop a clear
picture of the Jews underground life. The fruits of their findings
appear in this month's issue. Below, Adventure asks Nicola about
uncovering this forgotten story of courage, loyalty, and survival.

We have all heard extraordinary Holocaust survival stories, what about
this story makes it so unique?
It was the sheer magnitude of their survival and how they survived
together. In my opinion, the western Ukraine was the worst place on
Earth for Jews to live during World War II. Hitler was on one border
sending in troops whose sole purpose was to eliminate all Jews, and
Stalin was on the other enforcing a scorched earth policy by burning
everything that couldn't be moved. The chance of a Jewish person
surviving at all was less than 5 percent. But what made this story
different, and what is rarely seen in any Holocaust survival story, is
how these families stayed virtually intact.

How did you get in touch with the survivors?
After ten years of extensive research and a lot of dead ends, I came
across a number of sophisticated Internet search sites for the Jewish
community, used by thousands of Jews to look for missing relatives. I
thought if I put the right words on my own Web site
[www.uaycef.org]—such as "cave" and "grotto"—then someone searching
would pick up on them. Sure enough, in 2002, I got an e-mail late at
night and couldn't believe my eyes. It was a message from the son-in-law
of Sol Wexler. He said his father-in-law survived the Holocaust by
hiding in a cave. I was so excited—I was afraid to even touch the print
key in case I were to accidentally erase it. I calmed down, responded,
and got to meet Sol Wexler. He eventually led me to the others.

After you met them, what did it take to organize an expedition?
We interviewed the survivors extensively and worked closely with the
Ukrainian caving community to arm ourselves with as much information as
possible. Our idea was to retrace the exact routes the families took

from the first cave [where they were ambushed by the Nazis after six

months], through their flight into the woods, and then finally to the
sinkhole and Priest's Grotto—their home for the next year. At one point
we even ended up on an ox cart on the same road they followed.

It was amazing, because after hearing the story I was able to recognize
special things I'd missed before. For instance, one of the survivors,
only four years old at the time, said she remembers playing with a
bright, shining crystal in the cave. One of the largest crystals in the
world is close to their campsite inside Priest's Grotto, and chunks of
it will sometimes fall to the ground. When we saw the crystal, we
realized that that was where she used to play.

What other artifacts did you see differently after you'd heard the
survivors' story?
The millstone really struck me. I am in my 50s but pretty strong, and I
couldn't even move it. Yet Nissel Stermer carried it on his back for
three or four miles. That millstone was their life. They used it to
grind grain to make bread, which was the main part of their diet. Nissel
must have gotten a lot of strength from his family. I think it's like
the stories about mothers, full of adrenaline, gaining superhuman
strength to lift cars or bend metal to save their children. Nissel knew
this millstone would save his entire family. That hit me like a brick wall.

Unlike the families, who knew nothing about caves, you are an
experienced caver. What do you think were the greatest obstacles to
their survival?
Cavers wear specialized clothing. Without it, hypothermia is always a
problem. When the families worked, cut wood, or leveled the ground, they
would sweat. As the sweat evaporated, their bodies cooled down.
Ironically, their hard work worked against them and could have put them
in a hypothermic state. They also had to contend with bats, a source of
disease); malnutrition; smoke from their cooking fire contaminating
water sources; and getting lost in the dark labyrinth. The smoke in
particular was very dangerous. The four-year-old girl almost died from
smoke inhalation in the first cave due to poor ventilation. The Jews had
no choice but to learn to adapt quickly and along the way developed some
absolutely ingenious ways to overcome these hardships.

Can you give some examples?
The first cave was horrific, but they were smart enough to build a
spectacular escape exit. They dug up through a soft spot in the ceiling
and enforced and camouflaged a hatch so farmers wouldn't find it or fall
through. It saved their lives. In the second cave, which was much more
suitable for living, they set up designated areas for cooking and
sleeping, they used the natural ventilation system of the cave and built
walls to channel the smoke away from other areas. The families also had
an elaborate password system for the men who would go out of the cave
for provisions. They had a good password and a bad password. The good
password meant everything was OK; the bad password meant an enemy was
forcing them into the cave. They had few candles, so light was limited
to three short periods each day. After enough time spent wandering in
the dark, they memorized the feel of the cave floor on their bare feet.
It was like directions in braille.

What artifacts did you find in the cave?
The cave was a time capsule. We found medicine bottles, dozens of shoes,
buttons, and other wonderful things that reflected their daily life. The
Jews left all of their personal effects in the first cave, so in
Priest's Grotto, all they had left were tools. When we were digging
around we came across a railroad spike. One of the survivors had told us
it was their most valuable tool because they used it to chisel stone. We
also found a key under one of the beds, where people today hide their
valuables. Peter and I think it was a key to one of the families' houses
and they were keeping it safe for when they could use it again one day.
But when the family finally came out of the cave, they never went back
to retrieve anything. They left it all in the cave in case they ever
needed to return.

What is it like to spend a substantial amount of time underground?
When you first go into a cave, you feel like you are in the smallest
area you have ever been in your life. Your heart pounds, and you sweat.
You have this horrible feeling of confinement. It is very important that
you get acclimated or you will get tunnel vision, which prevents you

from focusing on the important things such as hydration, staying warm,

and not getting lost. The families never got completely comfortable
because they knew they could be ambushed at any time. One survivor said
her heart stopped every time the men left to replenish supplies because
she never knew if they would see them again. Not seeing the sun for
almost a year was also very hard. But at that time, if they saw the sun,
it meant they were in great danger.

I've heard stories of Holocaust survivors always carrying food so they
will never have to be hungry again. Do the Priest's Grotto survivors
have similar habits?
One of the survivors admitted to doing just that, carrying food with
her. She explained that when they lived in the cave, they decided at one
point that only the men who ventured out for provisions would get extra
rations, so the others were constantly hungry. Also, one of the
survivor's children said that he noticed his father and two uncles have
16-foot ceilings in the entryways of their homes. I think that's
preferable to the small hole they entered feet-first for a year!

Do you think that people today could survive like the families did?
Modern-day people who sit at a computer all day? I would say no for two
reasons. First of all, these were hands-on people. They were carpenters
and merchants who had to provide for themselves, especially during the
occupation. They also grew up knowing the history of the caves in the
area and that ancient people lived in them, so they knew it could be
done. Secondly, the Stermer grandmother taught her family not to trust
authority. At one point, before they fled to the caves, all Jews were
told to meet in town and register. The grandmother decided they were not
going to go. The family worried but they obeyed the grandmother. That
day, in five separate towns, the Germans rounded up thousands of Jews
and many were never seen again—it had been a trap. I think people today
often don't give themselves the right to question authority.

Why isn't this story more widely known?
When the families first came out of the caves, they had no idea if they
were going to need to go back again, so they kept it a secret. When the
Stermers immigrated to Canada the secret left with them. Later, when
they were ready to tell their story, no one believed them. Their friends
who survived the same Holocaust had very different experiences. They had
numbers on their wrists and slept on bare wooden floors covered in lice.
The families in the cave slept on warm beds, rarely got sick, and still
had their family members with them when it was over. I can understand
why some people didn't believe them and why they never told the story again.

What have you gained from this experience?
Talking to survivors put a face on the horrors of the Holocaust. I
wasn't looking at 60-year-old black-and-white footage of death camps. I
was looking into the souls of people who survived it. Individuals get
lost in the large numbers. But looking into the eyes of the survivors,
and then looking into the eyes of their children and grandchildren, was
a real and very personal experience. When we came back from Ukraine in
July of 2003, Peter and I showed the survivors and their families the
slides we took inside the caves. At the end I put the picture of the
names they wrote on the wall of the cave. Everyone was speechless. Not
just the survivors, who had never mentioned this, but their children and
grandchildren. Many eyes filled up with tears. Right below the names was
the year 1943. For the first time, the children and grandchildren saw
concrete evidence of how their grandparents and parents lived and
survived in that cave. It was wonderful to give that back to them.

What is your next step in this story?
I think we owe it to the survivors and their families to protect the
caves and the artifacts there. It is history and a story with some
amazing lessons: family, loyalty, survival, and perseverance. We took
photographs of what we found and mapped their locations. But it should
all be preserved and cataloged by professionals to ensure that other
generations can see the amazing way they lived and struggled to stay
together.


http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ad.../excerpt4.html

Off the Face of the Earth
IT WAS THE ONLY REFUGE THEY HAD LEFT. In 1942, as the Nazis intensified
their hold on Eastern Europe, several Jewish families disappeared into
the vast underground labyrinths of western Ukraine. The group ranged

from grandmothers to toddlers, and for the next year and a half they

lived, worked, ate, and slept in caves directly under the feet of those
who would send them to their deaths. Their story is one of history's
most remarkable epics of survival. And yet it was almost forgotten until
an American caver came across the remnants of their underground asylum
and set out to find the survivors of PRIEST'S GROTTO. By Peter Lane Taylor


Photo: the Stermer family
In 1947, three years after their underground ordeal, the Stermer family,
plus three new spouses, posed for a portrait. Back row, from left:
Shulim Stermer; Chana Richter; her husband, Joseph Richter; Yetta Katz;
her husband, Abe Katz; and Shlomo Stermer. Front row, from left:
Shulim's wife, Czarna; Esther Stermer; Henia Dodyk; and her daughter
Pepkale.

The night of October 12, 1942, when the Stermers finally ran for good,
was moonless and unseasonably cold. The roads in and out of the town of
Korolówka, deep in the farm country of western Ukraine, were empty of
the cart traffic that had peaked during the fall harvest days. After a
month of backbreaking work, most residents had already drifted off to sleep.

Zaida Stermer, his wife, Esther, and their six children dug up their
last remaining possessions from behind their house, loaded their wagons
with food and fuel, and, just before midnight, quietly fled into the
darkness. Traveling with them were nearly two dozen neighbors and
relatives, all fellow Jews who, like the Stermers, had so far survived a
year under the German occupation of their homeland. Their destination, a
large cave about five miles to the north, was their last hope of finding
refuge from the Nazis' intensifying roundups and mass executions of
Ukrainian Jews.


Map: Location of the grotto in Ukraine

The dirt track they rode on ended by a shallow sinkhole, where the
Stermers and their neighbors unloaded their carts, descended the slope,
and squeezed through the cave's narrow entrance. In their first hours
underground, the darkness around them must have seemed limitless.
Navigating with only candles and lanterns, they would have had little
depth perception and been able to see no more than a few feet. They made
their way to a natural alcove not far from the entrance and huddled in
the darkness. As the Stermers and the other families settled in for that
first night beneath the cold, damp earth, there was little in their past
to suggest that they were prepared for the ordeal ahead.

***
At the surface, Priest's Grotto is little more than a weedy hole in the
ground amid the endless wheat fields stretching across western Ukraine.
A short distance away, a low stand of hardwoods withers in the heat and
is the only sign of cover for miles around. With the exception of a
shallow, 90-foot-wide (27-meter-wide) depression in the flat ground,
there's nothing to indicate that one of the longest horizontal
labyrinths in the world lies just underfoot.

On the afternoon of July 18, 2003, I am standing with Chris Nicola, a
leading American caver, at the bottom of the sinkhole, sorting our gear.
It has taken us four days, traveling by jet, train, and finally ox cart,
to get here from New York City. It's tornado season on the Ukrainian
plateau, and overhead, the blue sky is rimmed with cumulus clouds
sheared off at the top. Our guides, 46-year-old Sergey Yepephanov and
24-year-old Sasha Zimels, are standing next to the rusting,
three-foot-wide metal entrance pipe that leads underground. They've been
ready to go for an hour.

I've come here to explore Priest's Grotto for the first time. For
Nicola, a 20-year veteran of major cave systems in the U.S. and Mexico,
our expedition is the culmination of a journey that began in 1993, soon
after the fall of the Soviet Union, when he became one of the first
Americans to explore Ukraine's famous Gypsum Giant cave systems. On that
trip he met dozens of local cavers eager to share news about their
recent discoveries. His last excursion was here, to the cave known
locally as Popowa Yama, or Priest's Grotto, because of its location on
land once owned by a parish priest.

At 77 miles (124 kilometers), Priest's Grotto is the second longest of
the Gypsum Giants and currently ranks as the tenth longest cave in the
world. Yet what Nicola found fascinating about the cave was located just
minutes inside the entrance: Soon after they'd set out, his group passed
two partially intact stone walls and other signs of habitation including
several old shoes, buttons, and a hand-chiseled millstone. Nicola's
guides from the local caving association told him the campsite had
already been there when their group first explored that portion of the
cave in the early 1960s.

"My guides called the site Khatki, or 'cottage,' " Nicola, now 53,
recalls. "They told me that it was settled by a group of local Jews who
had fled to the cave during the Holocaust. But that's where the story
ended. No one else could remember what had actually happened there, or
even if the Jews had survived the war at all."

Intrigued, Nicola began asking questions in the nearby towns. Western
Ukraine is a region where the Gypsum Giants have long been revered as
national landmarks and where uncomfortable memories of the Holocaust
still linger. Some local villagers told him that, after the Russian
troops pushed back the Germans in 1944, the survivors were seen
stumbling back to town, covered in thick, yellow mud. Others said the
Jews never saw daylight again.

On a later trip, Nicola learned more. "Rumors kept developing that at
least three families did survive," he says. But how had they lived in
such an inhospitable environment, Nicola wondered, and where were they
today? As a caver, he was awed by the courage and resourcefulness that
such long-term survival underground must have demanded. And he was
amazed that the story wasn't better known, even among Holocaust experts.

Back home in Queens, New York, Nicola intensified his efforts to locate
a Priest's Grotto survivor. He added information about the story to his
Web site on Ukrainian caves (www.uaycef.org), hoping that anyone
searching the Internet for the topic would contact him. For four years
he got no response. Then, one evening in December 2002, Nicola received
an e-mail from a man who said that his father-in-law was one of the
original Priest's Grotto survivors and was, in fact, living just a few
miles away in the Bronx. "I couldn't believe what I was seeing," Nicola
says. "I was afraid to even touch the print key in case I were to
accidentally erase it."

Seven months later we are standing outside the cave itself. It's 4:30
p.m. by the time Nicola and I are finished suiting up for entry. Our two
dozen duffels contain over 200 pounds (91 kilograms) of photographic and
survey gear and enough supplies to remain underground for three days.

As current president of the Ternopil Speleo Club, the local group that
has been pushing the exploration of this cave for 40 years, Sergey
Yepephanov is eager to show us his domain. He sticks his arm through the
steel plate at the top of the pipe, swings open the trapdoor as if he's
removing a manhole cover, and ushers us inside. (The club installed the
pipe several years ago to keep seasonal mudflows from clogging the
cave's entrance.)

Two dozen rickety metal rungs spot-welded to the inside of the pipe
disappear straight down into the darkness. There is just enough room for
each of us and our gear bags to squeeze down the rusty 30-foot
(nine-meter) shaft. When I reach the bottom, I can still make out
Sergey's silhouette at the top of the ladder, rimmed by bright, white
light. The rush of wind across the prairie is the last sound I hear
before he reaches through the small access port and slams the door shut
and everything goes black.

For the full story of how the Jewish families survived the Holocaust by
living below ground, pick up the June/July issue of Adventure.


"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire.
Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us)
off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give
them self determination under "play nice" rules.

Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you
for torturing the cat." Gunner


I'll never forget the first time I shook hands with a Holocaust survivor
and spotted the tattooed number on his right forearm.

The eldest member of my Rotary Club was a US Navy fighter pilot during
WWII. He spent over a year in a Japanese prison camp in New Guinea after
the battle of Midway where the carrier he flew from (The Yorktown) was
sunk. There is a five pointed star tatooed between the thumb and
forefinger of each of his hands, which he says was put there by his captors.

The silver ID bracelet his parents gave him when he went into the navy
was snipped off his wrist when he was captured. It was returned to him a
few years ago by a visiting Japanese rotarian, the grandson of that
prison camp's commander, who searched him out. He wears that bracelet
now with a Ty-wrap joining the cut link and won't have it repaired by a
jeweler.

This seems to me to be an appropriate quote for this thread:

We receive three educations, one from our
parents, one from our schoolmasters, and
one from the world. The third contradicts
all that the first two teach us.

Charles Baron De Montesquieu
(1689-1755)


Jeff

--
Jeffry Wisnia

(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)

"Truth exists; only falsehood has to be invented."

Your login name makes me feel old. It's nearly 50 years since I read
that book "The Revolt of Gunner Asch" and the sequels. Time flies when
you're having fun.
73 Gary de N9ZSV

Jeff Wisnia wrote:

I'll never forget the first time I shook hands with a Holocaust survivor
and spotted the tattooed number on his right forearm.


I grew up with one, ... my father. He was a survivor of Blechammer, one
of the satellite work and extermination camps of Auschwitz.

When I was a little boy, and I asked him what that number was, he told
me that it was his telephone number, and that he had it put in his arm
so he wouldn't forget it.

All that did was, that I began to think that my father was really
stupid. I only found out later ...

Abrasha
http://www.abrasha.com

On 22 Aug 2005 17:29:28 -0700, "Gary" wrote:

Your login name makes me feel old. It's nearly 50 years since I read
that book "The Revolt of Gunner Asch" and the sequels. Time flies when
you're having fun.
73 Gary de N9ZSV

You do know..that there are 4 books in the series.

Gunner

"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire.
Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us)
off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give
them self determination under "play nice" rules.

Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you
for torturing the cat." Gunner