Igna­cy Chiger (1906−1975) recounts his fam­i­ly’s des­per­ate strug­gle to evade Nazi per­se­cu­tion in wartime Lvov, Poland, where they hid in the city’s under­ground sew­ers with the help of an unlike­ly hero. This grip­ping first­hand account pro­vides a raw, unfil­tered per­spec­tive on life under two bru­tal occu­pa­tions — first the Sovi­ets, then the Nazis — shed­ding light on the tor­ment, courage, and will to live in the face of genocide.

When the liq­ui­da­tion of the Lvov ghet­to left the Chigers with no place to hide, they sought refuge beneath the city, dis­ap­pear­ing into the filth and dark­ness of its sew­er sys­tem. There, they sur­vived for 14 months, cling­ing to life in unimag­in­able con­di­tions. Their sal­va­tion came from an unex­pect­ed source — Leopold Socha, a Pol­ish sew­er work­er and pet­ty thief, who risked his own life to pro­vide them with food, pro­tec­tion, and a life­line to the world above. Once an oppor­tunist, Socha’s trans­for­ma­tion into a sav­ior of Jews stands as a tes­ta­ment to the pow­er of human decen­cy in the face of over­whelm­ing evil.

Deeply mov­ing and his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant, Beneath the Light­less Sky is an essen­tial addi­tion to Holo­caust lit­er­a­ture — a har­row­ing mem­oir of sur­vival, resilience, and the unimag­in­able hor­rors of war.

From the father of Krysty­na Chiger’s, The Girl in the Green Sweater, the inspi­ra­tion behind the Acad­e­my Award Nom­i­nee for Best For­eign Film, In Dark­ness (2011).