Clara Kramer Part 5: How Did Clara Kramer and Her Family Escape from the Żółkiew Ghetto?
Today I want to find out a little about how Clara Kramer, her family and several others managed to escape from the Żółkiew Ghetto.
By late 1942, it had become exceedingly clear that remaining in the ghetto would mean almost certain death. Thousands of Jewish men, women and children had already been deported to the Bełżec extermination camp, while others were murdered during round-ups. Clara's family realised that they could no longer wait. They had to find another way to survive.
Their hope came from an unlikely source. Valentin Beck, he was a Volksdeutsche (an ethnic German living in occupied Poland), he agreed to help them. Helping Jewish people could have cost him his own life, but he still chose to help them. Exactly what motivated him we don’t know, but survivor accounts do suggest that it was compassion and personal connections that influenced him.
A secret hiding place was underneath the Beck family's house. The bunker was originally dug under the house of Mechel Melman before Beck took possession of it. They were hidden under the floor and they reached the space through a concealed trapdoor. The underground shelter was small, dark and very cramped. There was barely enough room for the people who would eventually hide there. Once they went inside, they knew they might not come out again until the war ended.
Leaving the ghetto was probably one of the most dangerous moments that they faced. They escaped during the final liquidation of the Żółkiew Ghetto in 1943, when there was chaos and mass round-ups taking place. They left secretly, under cover of darkness, rather than through an official gate or with permission.
Somehow, Clara, her parents and the others managed to reach the Beck house and climbed down into the underground hiding place.
It was the beginning of a terrifying new chapter of their lives. Although they had escaped the ghetto, they were about to spend almost twenty months living under the floor in silence, darkness and in constant fear.
Tomorrow, I want to tell you what life was like inside the underground hiding place and how eighteen people managed to survive in such an unbelievably small space.
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