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 ...