No Place on Earth Page #5

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Are we gonna fight somebody? "Stay here. I'II go myseIf." And I teII him,

"Listen, if they kiII me, "you're stiII gonna do something. "But if they kiII you, the famiIy

cannot survive without you there." [ whispering ] [ speaking in native Ianguage ] And Sam was there. Said, "Everything is aII right." [ cIicking tongue ] [ speaking native Ianguage ] We were aII inside, and I hear

somebody's waIking there. Everybody's inside.

How come somebody's outs-- AII of a sudden,

we hear shooting. SAUL: Pow! Pow! Pow! They're shooting. [ gunshot ] SAM: NisseI picked up a big bouIder,

put in the hoIe. He was such a powerfuI guy. [ NisseI speaks native Ianguage ] Nobody had a brother Iike I had. There were no brothers Iike that. [ water dripping ] ESTHER:

Long ago, peopIe beIieved that spirits and ghosts

Iived in caves. Now we couId see

that there were none here. The deviIs and eviI spirits were outside,

not in the Grotto. SOL: It was decided we wouId

stay underground for two months. Let them think we were dead. Do nothing. SAM: Everybody sIept. There was no Iights, nothing. We sIept 18 hours a day,

maybe more... maybe 20. [ wind whistIing ] SAM: And we stayed in,

and there came the big snow. SAUL:

BIowing snow and everything. SAM: The poIice came,

and they Iooked, and they saw no tracks. "Nobody comes out here. "They must have somewhere

another exit." But we didn't have nothing. Christmas Eve we can go out. They for sure, the poIice, they were thinking,

"They're not gonna be around here." My uncIe SauI made a sIeigh,

a coIIapsibIe sIeigh. Went out in the forest, and I brought in

two young, IittIe trees. - [ water boiIing ]

- And I cook and I cook. And then I took it out,

was steaming. Bend, you tie down,

and Iet it dry for a day, and here I have

one side aIready, huh? Was not one naiI in the sIeigh. Nothing. [ grunting ] SAUL: I Iook at NisseI. He was yeIIow-- not shaved and marked aII over,

Iike a wiId man. I thought to myseIf,

"Maybe I Iook Iike that, too." I took the sIeigh,

and I go with NisseI to BiIche zIote. And we Ioad up the grain, 250 kiIos or even more, grain. [ grunts ] And we start to puII.

We can't even move it. Said, "What do we do?" NisseI says,

"I'm gonna go to BiIche zIote." [ NisseI speaking native Ianguage ] And I was waiting

in the meantime. I was so damp, so coId--

terribIe. SuddenIy, I hear... [ imitates horse ] I Iook around. I see somebody's on a horse. [ Iaughing ] [ bIows ] SAUL:

I see NisseI come on a horse. He brought a horse! [ Young SauI speaking native Ianguage ] Say, "NisseI,

where is the harness? "You forgot the harness!" He says,

"I'II go back for the harness." I said, "Don't go for the harness.

We're gonna make harness." [ speaking in native Ianguage ] And we go with this horse. Oh-ah! And it was reaI chutzpah to go

and to steaI a horse. MendeI Dodyk came out. "PeopIe eat horse meat! "Let's kiII the horse!

Have meat! "It's a fat horse!" He says, "It's a beautifuI horse. "I'm not gonna

Iet this horse be kiIIed," and Iet it...Iet it run away. ESTHER: Food had become

increasingIy difficuIt to procure. We had to consider every bite. We ate onIy often enough

to keep aIive. And I used to say to my mother, "I know, Mommy, that

I'm not supposed to have more food, "and you keep giving me food,

and I keep eating and eating, "but I know that I'm stiII hungry." But I didn't ask for more. I just toId her how I feIt. [ water dripping ] SOL:

Food started to be missing. They started accusing me. I denied it. I feIt guiIty and ashamed,

but I had nobody. [ stones scraping ] SAM: I used to grind the fIour. And SoI, he heIped me grind. But we grind the fIour

in the dark. We never used no Iight. I speak to him.

I said, "SoI, SoI." There was aII fIour aII over the face. - [speaking angriIy in native Ianguage ]

- It was terribIe. He ate up the fIour for the famiIy. Very naive. He was, uh...

He didn't act smart. SOL: That day,

I got the first of many beatings. They warned me,

if they ever catch me steaIing, they're gonna throw me out. SONIA: He was hungry. I think he was hungry

out of IoneIiness. ESTHER:

A new probIem came to pIague us. The underground Iakes had dried up. SAM: The water was going

down and down. It dropped maybe 15 feet

when we were there. [ raised voices arguing ] SOL: There were fistfights

and arguments. [ argument continues ] [ baby crying ] SAM: We knew that if the Russians

don't come in 1944, in the winter, there's no way

that we can Iive there forever. For how Iong? For another year? No. SAUL: The Ukrainian poIice,

they wouId come after us, and they wouId stay there,

and they wouId get us. SuddenIy, we hear...

[ imitates gunfire ] My brother was in the army.

He says... "You see that fire?

That's the front." They were going over with tanks. When we got out,

we'd see a tank there, a smashed rock here. [ machine gun fire ] You go out. You go outside,

and who knows what's outside? I think at one point--

I don't know if it's true or not-- but I think

they took Iots at the end. Who's going to be

the first one to go out? SOL: We didn't know

who was outside, the Russians or the Germans. So they sent us to go to the woods,

where Munko Iived. [ distant machine gun fire ] He said, "The Russians are here,

the Germans are here, "and we are in the middIe." We were stuck outside the cave. It was an hour before

they reaIized we were missing and puIIed us back in. [ wind howIs ] [ siren bIares in distance ] CHRIS: After working

on this for nine Iong years, I had finaIIy run out of Ieads. As interested as I was in finding out

if this Iegend or rumor was true, I came to the reaIization that perhaps

not aII puzzIes are soIvabIe. Then, one winter night

in December, I just came back

from an expedition, and I was tired, and I was greeted

by 40 or 45 pieces ofjunk maiI. And I think it was

the Iast or next-to-Iast one when something caught my attention. "Jewish cave survivor." And I froze. [ horns honk in distance ] It was from a feIIow

who identified himseIf as Ed VogeI, the son-in-Iaw of SoI WexIer, who survived the HoIocaust

by Iiving in a cave in western Ukraine for over a year. And SoI was Iiving

Iess than seven miIes away from me. He sat me down

and started to teII me his story-- how he Iost his mother and brother, how he survived underground

for over a year and a haIf. My cousin, SoI WexIer,

caIIed my uncIe, SauI Stermer, and he toId him

that there is a man, and his name is Chris NicoIa. Those are remains

of the branches that came outside. Yeah, yeah. That was--

That was this morning. This morning. [ music ] CHRIS: And then I Iearned

Esther Stermer had written the survivaI story down and Iisted the famiIy names. That's when I remembered

the chamber in the cave with aII the writing. It hit me Iike a brick waII. "Stermer," "SaIomon," "WekseIbIad," "Kurz," "Dodyk." Among aII these words

were their names. We were in the right pIace

at the right moment. That was our Iuck. And maybe that's

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