Today I want to find out a little bit about what life was really like for
Clara Kramer and the seventeen other Jewish people who were forced to spend
almost twenty months hiding under the home of Valentin Beck in Żółkiew.
By December 1942, Clara, who was only fifteen years old, her family and
others had gone into hiding in an existing underground bunker under Valentin
Beck's house. The space had been adapted to hide them from the German
authorities and any local collaborators. It was dark, cramped and had almost no
fresh air. There were no windows, very little room to move, and eventually
eighteen people were forced to share the tiny underground space.
Living conditions were incredibly difficult. Everyone slept close together
with almost no privacy. Every movement and every conversation had to be kept as
quiet as possible. Even an accidental noise could have revealed their hiding
place and may have led to the deaths of everyone inside, as well as Valentin
Beck, his wife Julia Beck and their daughter Ala, who all knowingly risked
their lives to keep the people in the bunker hidden.
Food and water depended entirely on what Valentin Beck could secretly bring
to them. Supplies were very limited, and meals were usually little more than
bread, potatoes or thin soup. Hunger and fear must have been constant. Water
was lowered through the trapdoor, usually in containers or buckets. The people
below had to ration every drop because fresh water was not always available.
Their toilet buckets could only be emptied when the house was empty and it
was safe for the Becks to open the trapdoor.
Washing was almost impossible and the lack of proper sanitation made the
bunker damp, uncomfortable and unsanitary. Illness must have been a worry
because medical help would have been almost impossible to get.
Each day followed much the same routine. They spent hours sitting or lying
in silence, only whispering when it was safe and listening to the sounds from
above.
Time seemed to pass incredibly slowly. The threat of discovery was always there.
The emotional strain was just as difficult as the physical conditions. Fear,
uncertainty and grief cast an overwhelming shadow over all of them. Living with
seventeen other people in such a confined space inevitably caused disagreements,
but they relied on one another.
Valentin Beck may have deliberately entertained German personnel- including
Wehrmacht soldiers and, at times, SS officers- in his home. He seems to have used
this as a way of deflecting any suspicion. When rumours started to spread that
he was hiding Jews, inviting German personnel into his house helped to make him
seem above suspicion. Very few people would have expected someone hosting them
would be hiding Jews under the floor.
This must have been so scary for the people in the bunker. Knowing that
German soldiers were only a few feet above them must have been terrifying.
Clara kept a diary and although it is not as famous as the Anne Frank diary
it recorded the daily struggles of life underground, the fear of discovery, the
tensions and the moments of hope that helped them to cope and inevitably to survive.
Her diary remains one of the most important first-hand accounts of what it was
like to survive in hiding during the Holocaust.
After almost twenty months underground, they finally escaped the bunker in
July 1944 when Soviet forces liberated the area. When Valentin Beck finally
told them it was safe to leave the bunker, it must have been almost impossible
to believe. Although they had survived, they had no idea what awaited them
outside. The joy of freedom was mixed with the painful realisation that many of
their loved ones would never return.
Tomorrow, we will look closer into just how close Clara Kramer and the
others came to being discovered, and the extraordinary risks Valentin Beck took
to keep them alive.
What do you think would have been the hardest part of living
underground for almost twenty months without knowing if you would ever see
freedom again?
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