No Place on Earth

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[ music ] CHRIS NICOLA:

Every cave I enter has a secret. [ water dripping ] Down there, in the darkness,

there's aIways a mystery to unIock. Some peopIe are afraid of the dark. Sounds echo seemingIy from nowhere. But there are no monsters down here. [ grunting ] Back in what we Iike to caII

"prehistoric times," peopIe escaped beasts

by hiding in caves. What was so surprising

about this cave was that its secret wasn't prehistory. It was Iiving history. ESTHER STERMER: Here we are

in the Grotto underground, buried aIive. Who couId teII

how Iong 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 traveI the worId, expIoring 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 Ianguage ] [ man speaking native Ianguage ] CHRIS: I wanted to research

my Eastern Orthodox famiIy heritage, and I wanted to expIore

Ukraine's Iegendary gypsum caves. Gypsum caves

don't occur that often in nature. They're very rare. And some of the biggest caves

in the worId happen to be gypsum caves, and they're

Iocated in western Ukraine. [ water dripping ] I was traveIing through

the second Iongest of the gypsum caves, the 77-miIe-Iong Priest's Grotto cave, when I turned a corner

and stumbIed over some objects. There were the remains of stoves. Trenches had been dug to make

earthen tabIes and earthen benches. And I'm not an archaeoIogist, but I couId teII

that these things were aged. You start to move some earth around. You find medicine bottIes, buttons, a Iot of buttons,

and a Iot of fragments of Ieather shoes. And one shoe was a Iady's shoe. What's a either very smaII woman

or chiId's shoe doing in that cave? Those objects

were someone's Iife. I had to find out

the story of who Iived there. I began to map aII the objects. Each object was

a piece of the puzzIe. I started asking peopIe

in the nearby town about the cave. In the earIy '90s,

a Iot of Ukrainians were stiII hesitant

to taIk to Westerners. I'm rather outgoing,

and I smiIe a Iot, I Iike taIking. Oh, no, no. PeopIe were very hesitant. Nobody smiIed. It may have been as soon as '94, '95 that someone said,

"Maybe some Jews Iived in the cave." CHRIS:

[ speaking Ukrainian ] Again, there's a Ianguage probIem.

I'm trying to find out, "What do you mean,

maybe some Jews Iived in the cave"? This was my first reaI Iead. I began to research

the history of the Jews in Ukraine, and I discovered

that before WorId War II, Ukraine was home to one of the Iargest

Jewish popuIations in aII Europe. My Eastern Orthodox ancestors

probabIy had Jewish neighbors. ESTHER: We were Iiving

in the town of KoroIowka-- my husband, zaide, our chiIdren, and I. There were 500 Jews Iiving in town. Ukrainians and PoIes

Iived on the bordering streets. The Jews traded with them. It had gone on Iike this

for many years. My two granddaughters were

the newest addition to our big famiIy. [ aII speaking native Ianguage ] With my grandmother, when you came

to my grandmother Esther, you had to produce. It wasn't pIaytime. She was a businesswoman. [ speaking native Ianguage ] 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

deIivered from Warsaw, from Czortkow, from Lvov. SAUL STERMER: She was reading

what happened in 1938 in Germany on CrystaI Night,

when they burned aII the synagogues. She said, "It's bad.

We have to run away, if we can." One day, she finds in the paper that Canada wouId accept Jewish farmers. ESTHER: We prepared our documents-- my husband, zaide,

and five of our six chiIdren. My oIdest son, NisseI,

who had been in the PoIish cavaIry, my younger son, Sam, and my middIe son,

the carpenter, SauI, and my two younger daughters,

Hannah and Yetta. My oIdest daughter, Henia,

and her husband, FischeI Dodyk, had decided to remain in KoroIowka with my granddaughters,

Sonia and IittIe Sima. [ speaking native Ianguage ] [ photographer counting down ] [ camera shutter cIicks ] SAM STERMER: And we had an interview

with the Canadian consuI. They examined us,

and we were accepted. And my father soId the Iand

and the houses, everything-- the beds and whatever we had. In 1939, on 8th of September,

we were supposed to go. It was reserved pIaces 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,

"BIack cIouds are coming." SONIA: Soon as the Germans came in,

they made a Judenfrei. They made Jewish peopIe

to be in charge of the other Jewish peopIe. SAM: They wouId teII us

they're gonna register aII the peopIe 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 pIaces." And we made those pIaces. We made about six pIaces. [ soIdier speaking German ] Gestapo!

[ speaking commands in German ] [ footsteps approaching,

muffIed voices ] [ soIdier speaking German ] I used to sit with my finger

on my mouth, and I knew I was

not aIIowed to speak. I wasn't aIIowed to whisper. I was never aIIowed to cry. I wouId 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. [ soIdier speaking German ] Somehow, I figured out

that my grandmother is a strong Iady. And if I'II be

where my grandmother is, maybe I'II survive. [ soIdiers speaking German ] We were pretty good tiII... tiII Sukkos '42. They surrounded the city,

and they went from house to house, and they took away 900 peopIe. More than haIf of the Jewish peopIe

they took away to BeIzec, 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 Iater, we are gone." "NisseI," she said

to my oIder brother, NisseI, "you go and Iook for a pIace. "You go in the forest there

and dig a hoIe somewhere tonight." My uncIe NisseI

went to BiIche zIote, and he said, "We shouId go to Verteba,

to the Grotto." ESTHER: In the center

of the BiIche zIote VaIIey was a very extensive cave, which had attracted speIeoIogists

from aII over Europe. We had no choice. We tried to stick

the famiIy together. That was our goaI. My cousin, SoI WexIer,

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, candIes, food, and water. We set up cIose pIace,

not far from the entrance. My mother said,

"We take everything with us." We had everything there.

We were equipped. [ sawing ] SAUL:

We start buiIding up some beds. Piece of wood here, naiI it,

two pieces of board. We bend those sides, and we brought in

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