ALEXANDER KIMEL - HOLOCAUST UNDERSTANDING & PREVENTION

HIDING PLACES

To avoid capture Jews built extensive hideouts called "bunkers". In the ghetto the place for living was rated not only by the few amenities it offered but mostly for the quality of the bunker. At night the ghettos were humming with live, emaciated human skeletons, were running like ants dragging pails with dugout dirt to dispose it in the few available open spaces, before dawn. They were constructing bunkers.

The building of bunkers and camouflaging the entrances to the bunkers developed into a fine art. A new profession of "bunker builder" was created. The bunker builder had to know how to dig a room under the house without destroying the foundation, how to provide ventilation, how to mask the entrance, and most of all he had to be trusted. In the ghetto of Rohatyn a group of people built an underground fortress called Sebastopol. The fortress was dug under the darkness of night for months if not years. The entrance was hidden, and supplies were provided that could support a group of people for about 6 months. It took a lot of planning, perseverance and sacrifices to build this bunker-fortress. Unfortunately in the conditions of the overcrowded ghetto, a project of this magnitude was a common secret. At the last "action' The Judenrein Action it took the Germans two weeks to find the ventilation shaft and three days of pumping water to flush out the people from the bunker.

HIDING PLACES IN WARSAW

"In the Ghetto, there were experts who specialized in building hideouts, and they achieved extraordinary results in this field, some hideouts in the Ghetto constituted whole underground flats, with toilets, washrooms, gas, bathrooms, radio, electric light, etch."

Ringelblum describes the extensive network of Bunkers:

Now in December 1942, hiding places are very popular. Everyone is building them. Their construction has actually become a flourishing specialized craft. Skilled worker, engineers, etch. are making a living out of it. After the selections-for deportations or forced work. a new chapter of hideouts has begun ..The population has begun to plan haw to secure their lives in case of danger...The new hideouts differ completely from those built during the time of the "operation". In the first place, they had to be used in cold weather; secondly, they had to be furnished for people to be able to live there months on end. The reasoning was that if all the Jews of Warsaw were to be liquidated. Those who had hideouts will stay there until they were rescued. ..The present hideouts are equipped with gas, electricity, water and toilets... They contain food supplies sufficient to last for months (preserves, sugar and the like). Since there is the fear that the Germans might stop the water passage, people have stocked up supplies on distilled water, buried in barrels in the hideouts. Or else special artesian wells are dug by Jewish craftsmen have also thought up a way to steal gas and electric current from the next house..The most important problem of hideouts is masking the entry. Every day sees the invention of new solutions, each clever than the previous one...In on place the entry was through a water closet in another through a bakery oven."

"Communication with the outside world is another basic problem. A few shops have hideouts so built that they have an underground connection with the Aryan side. ..Building this type of tunnel is one of the hardest things to do. A good deal of earth has to be moved surreptitiously. This is far from easy; consequently the diggers make it a rule that only those who worked on the tunnel may use the hideout."

kimel@systec.com