Light in the Dark

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Poland, 1943. It was the last refuge of the desperate, a warren of sewers underneath their city. Above, as the Nazis destroyed the ghetto of the city of Lvov, a small band of Jews escaped into a grim network of tunnels, living for fourteen months with the city's waste, the sudden floods, the fumes and the damp, the rats, the darkness, and the despair. Their only support was a lone sewer worker, an ex-criminal who constantly threatened to leave them. Many died; some falling into the rushing waters of the river, some simply of exhaustion. At one point the survivors found themselves trapped in a chamber, filling to the roof with storm-water. Yet survive they did, even infiltrating the camps above to find their missing relatives. When the Russians liberated Lvov, they emerged from the sewers filthy, bent double, emaciated, unrecognizable... but alive. This powerful story based on a long series of interviews, and a hitherto private diary, creates a blazing testimony to human faith and endurance.