On the morning of July 27, 1944,
in a quiet courtyard in Lwów,
a manhole cover… slowly lifted.
A sewer worker called down into the darkness…
“Come out… You’re free!”
From beneath the earth,
ten figures emerged.
Starved.
Broken.
Barely recognizable as human.
And the man who led them out, Leopold Socha, turned to the stunned crowd and declared:
“This is my work… These are my Jews.”
Fourteen months earlier,
One man made a daring decision.
My grandfather, Ignacy Chiger, a husband, and a father of two young children… engineered a prison break in reverse…
into a prison without walls.
He dug a tunnel.
He broke through three feet of concrete.
And he led his family down into it… into the sewers.
Into darkness.
This is not just a Holocaust story.
It is a story of strategy
of leadership
of what a father will do… when no other options exist.
Readers of my grandfather’s memoir will encounter evil in its rawest form
under both Soviet and Nazi occupation.
But they will also witness something else… a redemption story of Leopold Socha… a sewer worker… a petty thief… who became a savior
and rose as one of the Righteous Among the Nations.
Out of 150,000 Jews in Lwów,
260 remained alive.
Only one family… with two young children… survived.
My family.
In 1975, my grandfather sat down, for the first time,
and wrote this memoir from memory.
Six months later… he was gone.
I did not publish this book simply to tell his story.
I published it to give his voice the reach,
the clarity,
and the urgency… that this moment demands.
As a second and third generation survivor, I don’t just share history.
I ask audiences to confront it.
What does survival really require?
What does moral courage look like today?
Because memory without responsibility
is simply nostalgia.
