Beneath the Light­less Sky is a mov­ing, raw, and har­row­ing account of one family’s sur­vival dur­ing the Holo­caust under Russ­ian and then Ger­man con­trol. With excru­ci­at­ing yet riv­et­ing detail, Igna­cy Chiger describes how he, his wife, and their two young chil­dren sur­vived the Holo­caust against all odds — ulti­mate­ly escap­ing to the sew­ers beneath Lvov for four­teen months. 

Chiger deft­ly recounts the mis­ery he and his fam­i­ly endured under Russ­ian occu­piers who promised lib­er­a­tion but deliv­ered, in his words, only ​“spir­i­tu­al tor­tures and an elab­o­rate sys­tem of per­se­cu­tions.” The read­er is plunged into ever deep­er lev­els of deprav­i­ty as Lvov falls under the con­trol of the Nazis. In describ­ing his inge­nious and brave attempts to out­smart the Nazi guards in order to keep him­self and his fam­i­ly alive for even one more day, Chiger reveals how arbi­trary sur­vival in the ghet­to of Lvov was — often hang­ing on the whim of a sin­gle guard.

As the Nazis’ grip drew even tighter, Chiger orches­trat­ed his most dar­ing plan yet: he and his fam­i­ly would move into the sew­er sys­tem below the streets of Lvov. To sur­vive in the sew­ers, Chiger enlist­ed the help of a pol­ish sew­er work­er and pet­ty thief, Leopold Socha. Socha pro­vid­ed the fam­i­ly food and sup­plies long after the mon­ey ran out. Why did a life­long thief risk every­thing for a Jew­ish fam­i­ly? It is a ques­tion Chiger can­not ful­ly answer, but his words describ­ing his and Socha’s strug­gles in the sew­ers as they try to stay alive ensure that Socha’s hero­ism is nev­er forgotten. 

Beneath the Light­less Sky reminds us that even in the face of great evil, the human spir­it can endure and human decen­cy can exist.