The Girl in the Green Sweater - A Life in Holocaust's Shadow

Last Night at Harbor Links, Krystyna Chiger, a resident of Port Washington, gave a talk about her book The Girl in the Green Sweater. It is the incredible story of her experiences during the Nazi occupation of Lvov, Poland in 1943. After 150,000 Jews in Lvov had been forced into the ghettos and many others exiled or killed, Krystyna's father took the family, her mother and little brother, into the sewers to escape detection by the Germans. She was only 7 years old at the time and her brother was 3 years old. Krystyna and her brother Pawel are pictured here in 1941.

Krystyna explained to us how several families lived in the dark, with raw sewage and rats, braving floods, fires, sickness, and death, and always living in fear that they would be discovered. She spoke about her loss of innocence. But their hope was kept alive by a man named Leopold Socha, a sewer worker and a Catholic, who brought them food every day, took their clothes once a week and laundered them, and brought them newspapers to read by the carbide lamp they hung from a hook. When the Russians liberated Lvov 14 months later, Leopold introduced them as "my Jews." But their persecution had not ended with the liberation and they had to move again some months later. Read an interview she gave when she was 11 years old and living in Krakow.

When asked why she wrote the book, Krystyna said that because she is now the last survivor of this group, she felt that it was time to record her experience so that it wouldn't be forgotten. Here is Krystyna today with her son Doron Keren. They are both dentists; Krystyna is retired and her son practices right here in Port Washington.

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