"[ music ]" "CHRIS NICOLA:" "Every cave I enter has a secret." "[ water dripping ]" "Down there, in the darkness, there's always a mystery to unlock." "Some people are afraid of the dark." "Sounds echo seemingly from nowhere." "But there are no monsters down here." "[ grunting ]" "Back in what we like to call "prehistoric times,"" "people escaped beasts by hiding in caves." "What was so surprising about this cave was that its secret wasn't prehistory." "It was living history." "ESTHER STERMER:" "Here we are in the Grotto underground, buried alive." "Who could tell how long we need to remain?" "CHRIS:" "I'm a New Yorker." "I work as an investigator for the state of New York." "But my passion is caving." "I travel the world, exploring caves." "[ birds chirping ]" "It was in 1993, right after the breakup of the Soviet Union, [ dog barking ] that I first came to Ukraine." "[ man speaks native language ] [ man speaking native language ]" "CHRIS:" "I wanted to research my Eastern Orthodox family heritage, and I wanted to explore Ukraine's legendary gypsum caves." "Gypsum caves don't occur that often in nature." "They're very rare." "And some of the biggest caves in the world happen to be gypsum caves, and they're located in western Ukraine." "[ water dripping ]" "I was traveling through the second longest of the gypsum caves, the 77-mile-long Priest's Grotto cave, when I turned a corner and stumbled over some objects." "There were the remains of stoves." "Trenches had been dug to make earthen tables and earthen benches." "And I'm not an archaeologist, but I could tell that these things were aged." "You start to move some earth around." "You find medicine bottles, buttons, a lot of buttons, and a lot of fragments of leather shoes." "And one shoe was a lady's shoe." "What's a either very small woman or child's shoe, doing in that cave?" "Those objects were someone's life." "I had to find out the story of who lived there." "I began to map all the objects." "Each object was a piece of the puzzle." "I started asking people in the nearby town about the cave." "In the early '90s, a lot of Ukrainians were still hesitant to talk to Westerners." "I'm rather outgoing, and I smile a lot, I like talking." "Oh, no, no." "People were very hesitant." "Nobody smiled." "It may have been as soon as '94, '95 that someone said, "Maybe some Jews lived in the cave. "" "CHRIS:" "[ speaking Ukrainian ]" "Again, there's a language problem." "I'm trying to find out," ""What do you mean, maybe some Jews lived in the cave"?" "This was my first real lead." "I began to research the history of the Jews in Ukraine, and I discovered that before World War II," "Ukraine was home to one of the largest Jewish populations in all Europe." "My Eastern Orthodox ancestors probably had Jewish neighbors." "ESTHER:" "We were living in the town of Korolowka... my husband, Zaide, our children, and I." "There were 500 Jews living in town." "Ukrainians and Poles lived on the bordering streets." "The Jews traded with them." "It had gone on like this for many years." "My two granddaughters were the newest addition to our big family." "[ all speaking native language ]" "With my grandmother, when you came to my grandmother Esther, you had to produce." "It wasn't playtime." "She was a businesswoman." "[ speaking native language ]" "My other grandmother picked me up, kissed me, hugged me, but she didn't do that." "The time that I spent with her had to be productive." "She used to have the newspapers delivered from Warsaw, from Czortkow, from Lvov." "SAUL STERMER:" "She was reading what happened in 1938 in Germany on Crystal Night, when they burned all the synagogues." "She said, "It's bad." "We have to run away, if we can. "" "One day, she finds in the paper that Canada would accept Jewish farmers." "ESTHER:" "We prepared our documents... my husband, Zaide, and five of our six children." "My oldest son, Nissel, who had been in the Polish cavalry, my younger son, Sam, and my middle son, the carpenter, Saul, and my two younger daughters, Hannah and Yetta." "My oldest daughter, Henia, and her husband, Fischel Dodyk, had decided to remain in Korolowka with my granddaughters, Sonia and little Sima." "[ speaking native language ] [ photographer counting down ] [ camera shutter clicks ]" "SAM STERMER:" "And we had an interview with the Canadian consul." "They examined us, and we were accepted." "And my father sold the land and the houses, everything... the beds and whatever we had." "In 1939, on 8th of September, we were supposed to go." "It was reserved places on a boat." "Stefan Batory was the name of the boat." "The 1st of September, the war broke out, and we got stuck there." "SAUL:" "My mother said, "Black clouds are coming. "" "SONIA:" "Soon as the Germans came in, they made a Judenfrei." "They made Jewish people to be in charge of the other Jewish people." "SAM:" "They would tell us they're gonna register all the people between 10 and 50." "SONIA:" "And they're starting to say that we have to go to the ghetto." "My mother, she said, "Boys, make some bunkers, hiding places. "" "And we made those places." "We made about six places." "[ soldier speaking German ]" "Gestapo!" "[ speaking commands in German ] [ footsteps approaching, muffled voices ] [ soldier speaking German ]" "I used to sit with my finger on my mouth, and I knew I was not allowed to speak." "I wasn't allowed to whisper." "I was never allowed to cry." "I would have given out everyone." "So we were prepared for them." "We even prepared sand for the women to throw at them in the eyes in case they come in." "[ soldier speaking German ]" "Somehow, I figured out, that my grandmother... is a strong lady." "And if I'll be where my grandmother is, maybe I'll survive." "[ soldiers speaking German ]" "We were pretty good till... till Sukkos '42." "They surrounded the city, and they went from house to house, and they took away 900 people." "More than half of the Jewish people they took away to Belzec, to the concentration camps." "And the rest had to go to the ghetto." "My mother said, "No, we are not gonna go to the ghetto." ""We come to the ghetto, and two days later, we are gone. "" ""Nissel," she said to my older brother, Nissel," ""you go and look for a place." ""You go in the forest there and dig a hole somewhere tonight. "" "My uncle Nissel went to Bilche Zlote, and he said, "We should go to Verteba, to the Grotto. "" "ESTHER:" "In the center of the Bilche Zlote Valley was a very extensive cave, which had attracted speleologists from all over Europe." "We had no choice." "We tried to stick the family together." "That was our goal." "My cousin, Sol Wexler, was with us." "YOUNG SOL WEXLER:" "There were three of us... my mother, my younger brother Leo, and I." "My father had gone to New York before the war broke out, but we got stuck." "We began transporting here at night wood, kerosene, candles, food, and water." "We set up close place, not far from the entrance." "My mother said, "We take everything with us. "" "We had everything there." "We were equipped." "[ sawing ]" "SAUL:" "We start building up some beds." "Piece of wood here, nail it, two pieces of board." "We bend those sides, and we brought in some straw, some hay, anything." "SONIA:" "We came to Verteba." "[ gasps ] My God!" "I've got a playground here." "I would make-believe I'm living in a castle, and it was wonderful not being in a bunker." "My grandmother was very worried I shouldn't get lost." "You know, the cave had so many mazes" " going this way and that way." " Sima?" " You just had to take the wrong turn..." " Sima!" "and I was a very little girl." "[ rock clinks in cup ]" "SAM:" "It was warm." "It was dry." "And we had pillows and covers, and we had food." "SONIA:" "My father and my grandfather and my Uncle Nissel all bought badges." "They paid off the Ukrainian police, and they were allowed to buy back a horse and wagon from the peasants." "They were collecting scrap iron for the German government, but they were free." "SAM:" "So they could stay in our house." "They were driving around all over." "Nissel and my father and Sima's and Sonia's father brought in food and water and whatever we needed." "I used to explore." "That was my thing." "I used to walk around in every hole, in every place." "SAUL:" "Sam says he could see." "Maybe his eyes are different." "I couldn't go from here to there." "I wouldn't move." "We didn't have no water there." "So we used to have drips used to come in." "I used to go with my grandmother to get some drippings." "A glass of water was for a family for a day." "I was once so thirsty, I got out from the cave," "I said, "Even if they kill me, I have to go to a well somewhere. "" "And I was drinking almost all the pail of water." "I was so thirsty." "I didn't have water for a few weeks, just a little bit sometimes." "ESTHER:" "Nissel was our most important contact with the outside world." "One day, Nissel told us we had to hide more deeply in the Grotto because peasants were being seized for labor, and they might want to come here to hide, too." "SAM:" "Verteba was an open place." "You were exposed." "Nissel said, "If they come in," ""and you don't have another exit to get out," ""you're all doomed. "" "SOL:" "We used up all of our time and lighting supplies looking for a second exit." "My cousin Saul was always the leader." "I was inside a manager." "[ laughs ]" "I was..." "Anything, I was doing." "We come on one place, and I see a pile of earth." "In a cave, everything is stone." "I came over." "I took my shovel." "[ shovel scraping ]" "And we see between the two stones that it's soft." " [Nissel calls out ]" " Nissel?" "SAM:" "Nissel used to come in for two, three days and dig." "[ Nissel speaking native language ]" "If he was digging two hours, he made more progress than me in four hours." "Beautiful ground and very soft to dig." "I was digging three, four feet in a day." "SAM:" "And I helped." "Whatever they needed... they need light, they need a shovel." "I wanted to show that I, too, am one of the boys." "SAUL:" "One day, I was at the top, and I felt..." "I see, like, topsoil." "And I look up, and I see a star." "[ panting ] [ laughs ]" "SAM:" "We were so lucky." "You could come out in the middle of the road somewhere." "We come out on a field." "[ Saul laughs ]" "SAUL:" "And then I made, with a 2 x 4, like this, a frame all around and the top covered with dirt." "Then they went in the village, and they took a couple of chains from the bells." "So high..." "It was about five stories high." " [chains clanking ]" "Fifty feet high, maybe." "SAUL:" "The chain was hanging down." "When you walked up, you hold onto the chain." "ESTHER:" "After completing the second exit, we began to move back to our new living quarters, which was a cave completely remote." "It was all wild and primitive." "The ceiling was so low that we could not walk upright." "The families were now quite scattered and far apart within the cave." "The atmosphere was not as joyous as it was when we came in." "ESTHER:" "Every morning, Saul and Sam would go outside to see if there were any signs of strangers around." "One day, Saul came back, shaken." "He told us someone had actually made steps to descend into the Grotto." "[ speaking native language ]" "SIMA:" "The next thing that I truly remember... and it was horrendous and stays with me all my life, even if I want to push it away... was when the Germans came by." "Hersch Barad was right next to the entrance." "[ shouts ] [ shouting in native language ]" "And my mother right away stood up and said to the kids," ""Hide any place you can. "" "[ Esther speaking native language ]" "I grabbed the ax." "[ soldiers speaking German ] [ speaking German ] [ shouts ]" "My mother pushed me under." "There's no room for her to go in." "[ soldier yells in German ]" "[ soldiers speaking German ]" "[ woman screams ]" "SAM:" "I stood on the side, and I said to my cousin," ""Let's kill at least one of them. "" "When I saw that he's not moving, I threw away the ax." "I said, "I don't want to see when they kill me. "" " [ soldier speaking German ] - [ woman screams ] [ soldiers speaking German ] [ screams continue ]" "[ Esther speaking native language ]" "All of a sudden, I hear my mother." ""We live here like rats." ""We don't mix in politics." ""We are women and children. "" "SAUL: "What, are you afraid that the Fuhrer is gonna lose the war?"" "Can you imagine a Jewish woman to mention the name Fuhrer?" "And he says to my mother, "Don't be afraid. "" "SAUL: "We'll take you out, and you go in a camp. "" "My mother says, "I know what kind of a camp you have for us. "" "SAM:" "She told him." "She opened up his eyes, it looked like." "I see, hey, they're not killing." "After that, I lost my fear completely." "I started to dress with a jacket." " [ soldier speaks German ]" "Now I took my time." "He didn't like that, but what the heck?" "I had nothing to lose." "SIMA:" "My mother knew they were gonna march us out, and that I needed my shoes, and she didn't want to bend down to pull out the other shoe, because she felt that the German, with his machine gun," "may bend down with her together and may see my sister hiding underneath." " [ soldier speaking German ]" " SONIA: "Don't worry," he says." ""I can kill her right here." "Don't bother with the shoe. "" "My mother starts begging him." "[ commotion, Esther speaking native language ]" "SONIA:" "Hersch Barad pushed out my sister's shoe." "[ soldier speaking German ]" "[ heavy footsteps ]" "[ Leo pleading in native language ] [ soldier speaking German ]" "[ child crying ] [ soldier shouts ]" "[ Leo pleads ]" "[ shouts in German ]" "SOL:" "I could hear the noise in the distance, as they were leading them away, and the awful wailing of my little brother." "[ pleading continues ] [ soldier speaks German ]" "As soon as they turn around, I was sticking to my mother." "She went like this." "I knew the cave in the dark... [ soldier speaks German ] and I ran, and I ran right, left, and lied down under a rock." "[ soldier speaking German ]" "SAM:" "My mother slipped into a hole in the side." "[ soldier speaking German ]" "[ speaking German ] [ silence ]" "SONIA:" "I know they took my mother away." "I'll never see her again, and I'll never see my sister again." "All of a sudden, I hear somebody saying... [ speaking native language ] "Where are you?"" "WOMAN:" "Sonia?" "Sonia?" "[ speaking native language ]" "SONIA:" "My Aunt Yetta came looking for me." "[ Yetta speaking native language ]" "[ speaking native language ]" "SONIA:" "She says, "Don't be afraid." ""Whatever will happen to me will happen to you." ""I'll take care of you. "" "I..." "I don't know what happened, or I'm sure I got very scared." "But I don't remember nothing." "[ all speaking native language ] [ panting ]" "When I didn't hear them no more," "I ran in straight in the exit." "Saul was scared, and I kept pinching him." "Nothing." "I was finished." "[ all speaking native language ] [ chains rattling ]" "SONIA:" "I'm holding onto a chain, and I'm walking up the steps." "[ woman speaking native language ]" "SONIA:" "People are screaming," ""Open up the exit!" "Open up the exit!"" "[ young woman crying ]" "But there's nothing." "They can't do it." "They can't do it!" "[ woman and girl pleading ] [ boy speaking in hushed voice ] [ overlapping voices conversing and calling out ]" "[ women pleading ]" "[ woman pleading ]" "[ girls pleading ] [ overlapping voices ]" "Everybody started to run in different directions." "We were like wild people." "ESTHER:" "It was very cold." "Each one of us ran with no destination in mind." "I tried to speak to Saul..." " [ speaking native language ] but he couldn't reply." "[ panting ]" "SOL:" "We were only paces away from the guards." "We could hear them talk about discovering us." "We crawled to the village, to the Mirawald barn." "Mrs. Mirawald had hidden Hannah once before." "[ knocking on door ] [ speaking native language ]" "What a mother." "Oh!" "SOL:" "That night, I lay there and thought of Mother and Brother." "The Gestapo had turned them over to the Ukrainian police." "[ door closes ]" "SIMA:" "I remember when they put us into that prison room, and they put us down on the ground." "They didn't feed us." "My mother kept saying, "Don't worry, my child." ""You'll see." "You'll see." "We're gonna be fine." ""Your father's going to take us out." ""We're going to be okay. "" "[ Henia whispering ]" "She was just trying to comfort me because I knew at that age," "I knew we were going to be shot." "I knew that." "I was home already." "I was, uh..." "When I ran away, I came, and I went straight to the bunker." "My father and Nissel and Fischel, they ran to the Ukrainian police, and they made a deal with them." "500 something..." "I don't know..." "gram or something, gold." "The men had to bring five bodies to replace ours, because should the Germans come back and want to see where the bodies were that were shot, he protected himself." "He said, "I want to have two children, two women, and a man. "" "[ shovel digging ]" "SONIA:" "And they found two women and a man, but they couldn't find any children." "So my father said he's not stopping." "He's going to look in another place where he thinks there were some children." "I mean, that was the only way that they were going to save our lives." "The policeman insisted on that." "[ woman crying ]" "SIMA:" "The Ukrainian policeman said, "Just lie down." ""I'm gonna shoot five times in the air," ""and then you're just gonna run away. "" "[ woman crying ] [ gun cocks ]" "[ gunshot ]" "[ gun fires twice ] [ sniffs ]" "SIMA:" "We just got up, and my mother started to look why they didn't get up." "And that's when we realized that they were shot." "[ speaking native language ]" "ESTHER:" "When the chief of police, who was a stranger in the district, learned that Sol Wexler's mother was from Bilche Zlote, he decided he would not be able to free her or her son." "The peasants might see them and report back to the Gestapo." "[ speaking quietly in native language ]" "SOL:" "We left early the next morning." "It took us a full day to reach the Stermer bunkers." "As long as I live," "I will remember my cousin Sol Wexler's eyes, searching for his mother and brother and how guilty I felt that his mother and brother are not there." "[ wind howls ]" "SAM:" "He came into our house after he killed my aunt to collect the gold and the silver." "Got a whole bundle, and he went away." "And after that, we were in big trouble." "We had to hold off all the Germans." "Anyone gonna be spotted gonna be shot." "[ somber piano music ]" "CHRIS:" "I kept coming back to Ukraine every year, hoping to uncover the story of the people who had lived in the cave." "Western Ukraine was one of the worst places for Jews during the war." "Less than 5% survived here." "1.5 million Jews were executed without going to the camps." "It was a personal extermination." "I figured that if a group of Jews had lived in the cave, there were probably no survivors." "ESTHER:" "Outside, the sun warmed the fields, which were beginning to turn green." "All was awakening to life, but we sat there like condemned men." "There was no place on Earth for us." "SOL:" "Every night, I had dreams of my mother and brother." "And sometimes, in the middle of the day," "I would imagine seeing them while still wide awake." "We were hiding, and Nissel was going around to look." "My mother says, "Nissel, you got to find a place." ""We cannot live like this. "" "SAUL:" "Nissel went to Munko Lubudzin." "He lived in the forest in a little house." " Munko... [ speaking native language ]" " And he says..." "SAM: "I need a place for my family." ""Maybe I can make some bunker, hiding place in the forest, a hole. "" "He says, "You know what?"" ""I was once hunting a fox, and he ran in a hole." ""And I come there." "I didn't go in." ""There's a hole." "Try this hole. "" "This was the 1st of May, a Sunday, 1943." "[ speaking native language ]" "And we look on the right side." "It's an opening." "We got down, and we start sliding in." "[ water dripping ]" "As we were walking, we took corridors." "We took a long passage, and we started walking." "The main room that you walk in," "I think you could drive in with a couple of trucks." "Before was a smaller room, then was, like, arches, and you walk in the second." "And I touched a little stone." "It rolled down, and I hear... [ water splashes ]" "We go down, and I put my two hands like that, and I taste the water." "Such sweet water." "[ man speaking native language ]" "SAM:" "So this is the place." "We have water." "We can live." "We went home with good news." "ESTHER:" "They had found the best place imaginable." "No human being had ever set foot there." "Thirty-eight of us descended into the cave." "The men told us to slide down into the mud." "[ young girl whimpers ]" "SIMA:" "Somebody was standing there, and they kept pushing you." "You know, they were maneuvering you to go down." "You slid in the mud." "We talked to our mother and said, "It's very hard," ""and I don't know if you'll be able to squeeze through the stones. "" "ESTHER:" "I tried to get through the rocks, but it was impossible." "They maneuvered my body and placed me wherever they could until, finally..." "Boom!" "She's inside." "We got our mother inside." "We came, and we were very hungry, and we were wet." "And I remember I had, like, the chills, you know?" "We came there almost without food." "No food." "By the time we came to the second cave, everything was lost in the first cave." "[ water dripping ]" "SAM:" "Nissel was with my father in business, so he knew everybody, and everybody..." "He was a very likable guy." "SAUL:" "There was no bank." "There was no money." "There was no nothing." "But the only thing..." "if you have a few things, you trade." "SAM:" "The miller was a friend of Nissel's." "SAUL:" "And he bought a hundred kilos of flour." "SAM:" "This Ukrainian guy was supposed to go pick up the flour." "They made a deal with him." "[ man speaking native language ]" "And he's to meet Saul and Nissel in the field there." "They made an appointment." "They came there." "The guy's not there." "We were waiting and waiting, and we see it's almost daylight, so we went back to the cave." "SAM:" "So the next night, they went to him." "SAUL:" "We didn't go by the door." "Forced a window, and we got inside." "[ men speaking native language ]" ""Don't ask questions." "Give us back the flour. "" "SAM:" "Finally, he says, "Okay, I got some here in the corner. "" "So he gave a third of it." "We decided we need a stone to make our own flour the guy took away from us." "SAM:" "So, a couple days later, Nissel and Saul went to his house." "And we went in his barn, and here's the stone." "SAM:" "That stone they can hardly lift, right?" "SAUL:" "Nissel carried it home with us on his back." "[ Nissel speaking native language ] [ groans ]" "SAM:" "Once they got the top stone, they made a bottom stone." "Grind a little bit flour and a little potatoes, and you used to go to the kitchen and cook." "SONIA:" "Each family had one man or two men that would go out and get food." "If they brought in a bread, they brought in the bread for their family." "These were the rules." "SIMA:" "The women never went out." "Only the men went out." "[ people conversing quietly ]" "SOL:" "When it came to food, each family was separate." "My uncle, Zaide Stermer, was hiding above ground." "Nissel and Saul were now heads of our family." "My father was in a very small village, and he had a very good friend." "He was afraid, plain and simple." "He was just afraid, you know?" "We knew one thing." "We have to go." "We have to do what has to be done." "We have to go out, no matter what." "If there's no food here, that's the end of it." "[ animal squawks ]" " [ speaks native language ]" " SAM:" "Nine uniforms." "I put on a shirt with a pair of pants." "I felt like a hundred dollars!" "[ laughs ] [ speaks native language ]" "It was so much fun." "[ insects chirping ]" "SAUL:" "To cut wood was the most dangerous thing." "It was so noisy." "You start cutting and knocking and sawing." "You could hear it." "You could hear it to the police station." "So, we were standing there and cutting wood." "This guy came over." "He knew us." "He was like... grew up with us." "[ whispering in native language ]" " Some people said, "Take him in alive. " - [ men conversing in native language ]" "And some people said, "Kill him." "He can go to the police. "" "[ man speaking native language ]" "SAM:" "And then the decision was to let him go and to trust him." "We trusted him." "They came with the shovels and with the digs, and they, I bet you they threw in there maybe 25 loads" "till they filled up the hole." "They say, "That's gonna be the end of them. "" "[ panting ]" "SAM:" "Mendel comes running in." ""The villagers covered the hole." ""That's it." "We're gonna die here. "" "SOL:" "We thought we were finished." "They knew about us." "We didn't have another exit." "ESTHER:" "We would all die of hunger here, a fate worse than strangulation." "SAUL: "It's terrible!" ""We can't go out!" "We're gonna die here!"" "I said, "Wait a minute. "" "The second cave was all over stone." "Only in the front..." "SAM:" "There was, like, a little room there when we came in." "And there was a boulder." "And on top of that boulder on the side..." "SAUL:" "I see some earth." "SAM:" "Three days and three nights, we were working, everybody in shifts." "[ grunting ]" "We made another exit." "We made sure that they couldn't come in, because who wants to slide in, in a wet hole feet first?" "You don't know where you're going." "There was a man always standing with an ax, and if they would have come in, they had to come with the feet first." "They would have chopped off their feet." "[ men conversing in native language ]" "SAM:" "We trusted one man, Munko." "And Munko used to tell Nissel all news." "ESTHER:" "There was talk in the village that my daughter Hannah was hiding out in the home of the Mirawald woman." "She had been there ever since they had discovered our first cave." "When my grandmother heard that, she said to my Uncle Nissel," ""You go and bring her immediately. "" "[ conversing in native language ]" "SAUL:" "And Hannah came out, and she looked so nice... so clean!" "[ conversing in native language ]" "The next day, the Ukrainian police came, and they turned the house upside down looking for Hannah." "If they would have found her, they would have surely killed her." "Then the priest came, and he said that nobody should keep a Jew." "He preached that they should get rid of all the Jews." "So the farmer came home." "He says to my father, "You have to leave. "" "[ speaking native language ]" "SAM:" "He says, "Run. " [ speaks native language ]" "We had no friends." "ESTHER:" "All the family was now in the cave." "Every time the men returned from the outside, they had bitter news." "The police and their helpers had boasted that they had discovered a bunker in the forest and killed very many Jews." "Among them were our best friends." "There were 24 people in the bunker." "[ man singing in native language ]" "My grandmother kept a calendar in her head." "She knew day by day which day it was." "And when the holidays came around, my father was the hazan, and he knew how to pray beautifully." "All day in Kippur, we didn't sleep." "We would fast, and he was praying." "[ singing continues ]" "[ man praying in native language ]" "[ insects chirping ]" "SIMA:" "When the men used to go out, it was very, very frightening." "SONIA:" "The women would sit, but they wouldn't talk, because nobody wanted to... to say it out loud that they might not come back." "Everyone thought about it, but nobody said anything." "SAM:" "If I didn't go out with Nissel and Saul," "I was sitting there and waiting for them to come back." "Somebody else would try to come in, I would stick him." "ESTHER:" "On the evening of the 10th of November, my sons, Nissel and Saul, joined by my husband, Zaide, went to buy grain and fuel." "SAUL:" "Some people in our cave, they had, let's say, a gold chain." "They cut little pieces, and the deal was made." "And we had to stay over the barn." "It was so cold." "So, we tell to our father, "Why are you gonna stay here?" ""It's cold." "Go back to the cave. "" "What me and Nissel did together, my father was completely a different person." "[ speaking native language ]" "So he went back." "This was, about, should I say 12:00." "About 2:00, he's back." "He says, "As I was walking to the cave," ""somebody was yelling, 'I'm gonna shoot!"'" "He run away." "And the police is near the cave." "We are here, the family in the cave." "We wouldn't be able to go in." "They wouldn't be able to run." "Everything is over." "We're gonna all die now." "Nissel said, "Let's go and have a look. "" "Then I say to Nissel." "I say, "What if we both croak?" ""What do you think?" "Are we gonna fight somebody?" ""Stay here." "I'll go myself. "" "And I tell him, "Listen, if they kill me," ""you're still gonna do something." ""But if they kill you, the family cannot survive without you there. "" "[ whispering ] [ speaking in native language ]" "And Sam was there." "Said, "Everything is all right. "" "[ clicking tongue ]" "[ speaking native language ]" "We were all inside, and I hear somebody's walking there." "Everybody's inside." "How come somebody's outs..." "All of a sudden, we hear shooting." "SAUL:" "Pow!" "Pow!" "Pow!" "They're shooting." "[ gunshot ]" "SAM:" "Nissel picked up a big boulder, put in the hole." "He was such a powerful guy." "[ Nissel speaks native language ]" "Nobody had a brother like I had." "There were no brothers like that." "[ water dripping ]" "ESTHER:" "Long ago, people believed that spirits and ghosts lived in caves." "Now we could see that there were none here." "The devils and evil spirits were outside, not in the Grotto." "SOL:" "It was decided we would stay underground for two months." "Let them think we were dead." "Do nothing." "SAM:" "Everybody slept." "There was no lights, nothing." "We slept 18 hours a day, maybe more... maybe 20." "[ wind whistling ]" "SAM:" "And we stayed in, and there came the big snow." "SAUL:" "Blowing snow and everything." "SAM:" "The police came, and they looked, and they saw no tracks." ""Nobody comes out here." ""They must have somewhere another exit. "" "But we didn't have nothing." "Christmas Eve we can go out." "They for sure, the police, they were thinking, "They're not gonna be around here. "" "My uncle Saul made a sleigh, a collapsible sleigh." "Went out in the forest, and I brought in two young, little trees." " [ water boiling ]" " And I cook and I cook." "And then I took it out, was steaming." "Bend, you tie down, and let it dry for a day, and here I have one side already, huh?" "Was not one nail in the sleigh." "Nothing." "[ grunting ]" "SAUL:" "I look at Nissel." "He was yellow... not shaved and marked all over, like a wild man." "I thought to myself, "Maybe I look like that, too. "" "I took the sleigh, and I go with Nissel to Bilche Zlote." "And we load up the grain, 250 kilos or even more, grain." "[ grunts ]" "And we start to pull." "We can't even move it." "Said, "What do we do?"" "Nissel says, "I'm gonna go to Bilche Zlote. "" "[ Nissel speaking native language ]" "And I was waiting in the meantime." "I was so damp, so cold..." "terrible." "Suddenly, I hear... [ imitates horse ]" "I look around." "I see somebody's on a horse." "[ laughing ] [ blows ]" "SAUL:" "I see Nissel come on a horse." "He brought a horse!" "[ Young Saul speaking native language ]" "Say, "Nissel, where is the harness?" ""You forgot the harness!"" "He says, "I'll go back for the harness. "" "I said, "Don't go for the harness." "We're gonna make harness. "" "[ speaking in native language ]" "And we go with this horse." "Oh-ah!" "And it was real chutzpah to go and to steal a horse." "Mendel Dodyk came out." ""People eat horse meat!" ""Let's kill the horse!" "Have meat!" ""It's a fat horse!"" "He says, "It's a beautiful horse." ""I'm not gonna let this horse be killed,"" "and let it..." "let it run away." "ESTHER:" "Food had become increasingly difficult to procure." "We had to consider every bite." "We ate only often enough to keep alive." "And I used to say to my mother," ""I know, Mommy, that I'm not supposed to have more food," ""and you keep giving me food, and I keep eating and eating," ""but I know that I'm still hungry. "" "But I didn't ask for more." "I just told her how I felt." "[ water dripping ]" "SOL:" "Food started to be missing." "They started accusing me." "I denied it." "I felt guilty and ashamed, but I had nobody." "[ stones scraping ]" "SAM:" "I used to grind the flour." "And Sol, he helped me grind." "But we grind the flour in the dark." "We never used no light." "I speak to him." "I said, "Sol, Sol. "" "There was all flour all over the face." " [speaking angrily in native language ]" " It was terrible." "He ate up the flour for the family." "Very naive." "He was, uh..." "He didn't act smart." "SOL:" "That day, I got the first of many beatings." "They warned me, if they ever catch me stealing, they're gonna throw me out." "SONIA:" "He was hungry." "I think he was hungry out of loneliness." "ESTHER:" "A new problem came to plague us." "The underground lakes had dried up." "SAM:" "The water was going down and down." "It dropped maybe 15 feet when we were there." "[ raised voices arguing ]" "SOL:" "There were fistfights and arguments." "[ argument continues ]" "[ baby crying ]" "SAM:" "We knew that if the Russians don't come in 1944, in the winter, there's no way that we can live there forever." "For how long?" "For another year?" "No." "SAUL:" "The Ukrainian police, they would come after us, and they would stay there, and they would get us." "Suddenly, we hear..." "[ imitates gunfire ]" "My brother was in the army." "He says..." ""You see that fire?" "That's the front. "" "They were going over with tanks." "When we got out, we'd see a tank there, a smashed rock here." "[ machine gun fire ]" "You go out." "You go outside, and who knows what's outside?" "I think at one point..." "I don't know if it's true or not... but I think they took lots at the end." "Who's going to be the first one to go out?" "SOL:" "We didn't know who was outside, the Russians or the Germans." "So they sent us to go to the woods, where Munko lived." "[ distant machine gun fire ]" "He said, "The Russians are here, the Germans are here," ""and we are in the middle. "" "We were stuck outside the cave." "It was an hour before they realized we were missing and pulled us back in." "[ wind howls ]" "[ siren blares in distance ]" "CHRIS:" "After working on this for nine long years," "I had finally run out of leads." "As interested as I was in finding out if this legend or rumor was true," "I came to the realization that perhaps not all puzzles are solvable." "Then, one winter night in December," "I just came back from an expedition, and I was tired, and I was greeted by 40 or 45 pieces of junk mail." "And I think it was the last or next-to-last one when something caught my attention." ""Jewish cave survivor. "" "And I froze." "[ horns honk in distance ]" "It was from a fellow who identified himself as Ed Vogel, the son-in-law of Sol Wexler, who survived the Holocaust by living in a cave in western Ukraine for over a year." "And Sol was living less than seven miles away from me." "He sat me down and started to tell me his story... how he lost his mother and brother, how he survived underground for over a year and a half." "My cousin, Sol Wexler, called my uncle, Saul Stermer, and he told him that there is a man, and his name is Chris Nicola." "Those are remains of the branches that came outside." "Yeah, yeah." "That was..." "That was this morning." "This morning." "[ music ]" "CHRIS:" "And then I learned Esther Stermer had written the survival story down and listed the family names." "That's when I remembered the chamber in the cave with all the writing." "It hit me like a brick wall." ""Stermer," "Salomon,"" ""Wekselblad," "Kurz," "Dodyk. "" "Among all these words were their names." "We were in the right place at the right moment." "That was our luck." "And maybe that's why I wanted to go back and to say thank you to the cave." "[ all conversing in native language ]" "SONIA:" "It's with us." "We try not to show it, but it's always with us." "And here I am, back after 67 years!" "Oh!" "[ laughs ]" "SIMA:" "My Uncle Sam and my Uncle Saul have fantastic memories." ""Well, this piece of land belonged to this family," ""and this piece of land belonged to our family." ""And this piece of land belonged to the Dodyk family. "" "Then I stop for a second." "I say, "Hey, where are the people?" ""Where are the people?"" "I know this..." "I knew all the names." ""This is Rolenstock, and this is Schneider, and this is... "" "Right through all the people, and nobody there." "SAM:" "Where are the people?" "This was the most painful thing to come." "Very painful." "[ dog barks in distance ] [ birds chirping ]" "SIMA:" "Going back into that prison room, that was my hardest day of my trip to Ukraine." "I saw everything that happened, and it's almost like I heard my mother speaking to me in my head." "We didn't speak." "We didn't tell people too many times." "If we spoke about the cave, we spoke it amongst ourselves." "We didn't tell it to others, because it was just too incredible." "CHRIS:" "It would be hard for experienced cavers to endure a year underground... not just by the environmental conditions, but also mental conditions." "They discovered one of the longest caves in the world, and they broke the record for uninterrupted, sustained survival." "These were amateurs, that ranged in age from 2 years old to 76." "They went into the cave not equipped, but through trial and error, being able to think out of the box, they turned themselves into world-class cavers." "We thought that getting into Priest's Grotto might be too difficult for them." "Sam is in his 80s, and Saul is 91." "But Sam insisted on trying." "Okay." "[ men conversing indistinctly ]" " Okay?" " We're doing good" "Okay?" "SAM:" "Yeah, listen," "I'm very disappointed, because I wanted to go in and be in the place where we lived." "Listen." "Listen." "The Ukrainians will tell you there's something special about this cave." "Once you open the door, you can feel something." "The cave knows you and your brother were here." " Oh, yeah, the cave knows!" " It knows." " Yeah, yeah." " It knows." "CHRIS:" "What did your mother write in the beginning of the book?" "What did she write about why she wrote the book?" "Because she wants maybe someday grandchildren and great-grandchildren come and to see what we went through." "And who's standing right alongside you?" "My granddaughter and my brother's grandson." "It was my first bedtime story..." "everything about the cave." "SAUL:" "My granddaughter..." "she got out." "Beautiful... a nice, tall girl." "Said, "This is my granddaughter, came to my cave. "" "This was worth a million to see that." "The first day, when I walked down, and I came, and I looked down." "I could see it now, the way it looked." "CHRIS:" "Nice and slow, Saul." "Guiding Saul through the passageways of Verteba was quite an experience." "I felt like I'm going back in time." "And in my mind," "I'm thinking that he's seeing things the same way he did 67 years ago." "You better watch my cave here." "Don't break nothing." "CHRIS:" "When it was Sam's turn, his energy level was unbelievable." "SAM:" "Fine." "I'm fine." "CHRIS:" "He was so eager and energetic, he was pulling me through the cave." "CHRIS:" "We're gonna continue going straight." "When I went into Verteba..." "I..." "I..." "I saw everything in front of me." "I saw the people." "Look, this is where they were cooking." "SONIA:" "And I was happy." "This is where they were cooking." "Look." "Don't you see, it's all smoke here?" "SIMA:" "When I was five years old, one-third of my life was spent in caves." "I think we slept here." "I think this is where we..." "See, Sam?" "When it gets dark..." " Yeah." " and they put just a candle, you're gonna see the same change." "[ lights click off ]" "SAUL:" "Now I know where I am." "Let's close down the lights for a minute." "Ahh." "Now I feel good." "The cave was fighting for me." "I should be alive today." "Those stones..." "Those stones put up a fight." "SONIA:" "I was safe in the darkness." "I feel safety in the quietness, and sometimes, you know," "you're still the child that is in the Grotto." "SAM:" "The Russians..." "they bombed the Germans, so we stayed inside, and we told this guy that if the Russians come in, he should put a note and put it on a string and put it down in the hole." "[ clanks ]" "One day, I come out, and there it is." "Oh, what a noise." "Everybody was yelling and crying and... and we were liberated." "[ birds chirping ]" "You can't imagine this feeling, how beautiful it is outside." "SIMA:" "I said, "Close the candle, quick!" ""It's too bright." ""I can't see. "" "I forgot that there was a sun." "[ music ]" "Not one person came out to greet us and say, "Hey. "" "These were neighbors..." ""We're so happy that you're alive. "" "SAUL:" "And we had a dog before we left, a beautiful German shepherd." "This dog, if he could say, "Where have you been?"" "SIMA:" "There are miracles, and there aren't miracles." "Depends how you want to believe." "There had to be miracles for us." "CHRIS:" "I feel like I did something good." "I went to Ukraine looking for my family's story, and I found someone else's." "We beat the odds, and they didn't get us." "SAM:" "We are not heroes, just survivors." "We fought." "We were fighters." "ESTHER:" "We were masters of our own fate in the cave." "There was no one to whom we owed our safety or upon whom we depended." "After our men came in from the outside and scraped off the mud which clung to their clothing, they were free men."