Krystyna Chiger goes to hell for a hid-out–world history and facts






Krystyna Chiger goes to hell for a hid-out


Like so many children, Krystyna Chiger had one item of clothing that she just wouldn’t stop wearing. Hers was a favorite green sweater, knit by her grandmother.

On a spring day in 1943, Krystyna’s mother insisted she put on the sweater as her family fled into an unimaginable hiding place—the sewers. 

Krystyna, then 7, her younger brother, her mother, Paula, and her father, Ignatsi, survived for more than a year amid rats, spiders, and a constant stench.

“It was like going to hell.” 

Before hiding in the sewers, Krystyna's family experienced years of hardship under the Nazis in the German-occupied city of Lwów, Poland (today Lviv, Ukraine). They were forced to move into a ghetto. 

As the Germans rounded up Jews to send them to their deaths, Ignatsi scrambled to find ways to save his family.

In spring 1943, Ignatsi told his family to hurriedly pack and dress. Krystyna fought with her mother, who insisted she wear boots and layers of clothes, including the green sweater. Ignatsi led the family to a basement and revealed a hole into a labyrinth of darkness. 

For months, the family survived with the help of Polish sewer worker Leopold Socha and others.

Krystyna’s family survived illness, near drownings, and the threat of starvation. In late July 1944, a smiling Leopold directed them out of the sewers through a manhole as stunned people watched them emerge.

Krystyna later showed the green sweater that had meant so much to her to her sons. They said, “'Mom, you were so little … .' They couldn’t imagine that once their mother was a child too, and the sweater is a reminder of it.”

Portrait: USHMM, courtesy of Marian and Kristine Keren
Artifact photos: USHMM



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