The location of the underground hideouts remained unknown until a team of archaeologists inspired by a 2011 Polish movie about the saga discovered a secret chamber where at least 20 Jews lived.
The dozens of Jews who escaped the Nazis by hiding in the sewers of Lviv became local and international lore almost immediately after World War II.
“In the summer, when the rain seeped in, there was a lot of water everywhere,” Krystyna Chiger recalled in testimony in 1947, when she was 11. “Then we had to lean very low on the stones right next to the wall so that the water would not flow on us.”
