From the Testimony of Bernard Mayer on Building a Bunker in a Gentiles Home, Poland, 1943 Then one day, my mother goes out, a day that she looked around and she was staying outside the closet and she decided to go into the ghetto to buy some food. So there was a small grocery store, one grocery store that this man had. His name was Mr. Kopferberg. My mother came into that store. Over there, she meets a lady and this lady, her name was Mrs. Schwartz, who had a family, entire family intact. She had two daughters and a son and a husband. Till January of 1943, she was hiding in the factory that her husband used to own before the war. Over there, the manager became now a man called Keczmarek. This man was taking care of them, but he couldn't keep them too long in that factory. Next to the factory was a house that the family Schwartz owned. In that factory worked a man named Ivan Bur, a young man of twenty-two years of age and his wife. Keczmarek suggested to him that house which was Mrs. Schwartz's house, he should move in into that house. So Ivan moved into that house which was originally Mrs. Schwartz' house. He tells him: "You know what? I have here the family Schwartz. If you can hide these people in the house." Ivan was startled and then he was thinking about it. He said: "For money, I'm going to hide them." But there was a problem. First of all, Mrs. Schwartz had no money. Number two, you had to build some sort of hiding place for that. So at that particular time, by chance, Mrs. Schwartz meets my mother in the ghetto in that grocery store and she tells her: "Look, I have a man that is willing to hide us who will for money and we also need somebody to build a bunker." Well, my mother said: "Okay." We had some money. My mother had, first of all, we saved some money from the grain and besides that, my mother had some diamonds from before the war yet which she didn't spend because she had other income. She said: "Fine. I'll give everything I have as long as this man is going to hide us." She comes home and she talks to my brother and I happen to come at that time, too and she tells us. My brother says: "Fine. Let's meet this man Ivan Bur and we will try to make a bunker and we will pay Ivan whatever we have, whatever he wants as long as we'll have somewhere to hide." [t]he next day Mrs. Schwartz who was a 1/6
very enterprising lady and she was such a fantastic sales lady that she could talk anybody into almost anything. Mrs. Schwartz was trying to sell us this because she knew that she needed somebody who would just fit the needs that she needed. She had no money and she didn't know how to build a bunker. The only thing she had is this man, this Ivan Bur who was the man living in her former house. But this man was the key to the entire thing because to find a gentile who would take on a project like this was very rare. It was practically impossible. So when she came with this idea that she has a man who is willing to hide us, it was like a blessing from the sky. We couldn't imagine that this would happen. The next day she went there...by the way, I want you to know in Drohobycs, as I told you before, the ghetto wasn't closed so you could get in and out of the ghetto. As long as they didn't catch you, you were fine, because they removed your armband and you walked around. She went there and she picked up this Ivan and she brought him to our ghetto apartment. When I looked at Ivan and my brother looked at Ivan, he was a tall, slim Ukrainian, very sleek, very sharp, not to be believed. He was a man who you wouldn't trust with one dime. We looked at him and we told Mrs. Schwartz: "He doesn't look like a man that we can trust. He'll take our money and he'll just give us away to the Germans. She said: "Don't worry, this Mr. Keczmarek, who was the manager of that factory, he will watch him. He'll make sure that he wouldn't do it." My mother said to my brother and to me: "Look, children, we have no choice. We have to take a chance with him. We have to take a chance. Whatever he wants, we'll give him. I will give him everything I have because we have no other way out". My brother first had to find a man that knows how to build a bunker and he had to find a man that would get supplies to build a bunker. You needed wood. You needed all kinds of materials...[m]y brother, the first thing he did, he knew everybody. He was older than I was. He was twelve years older than I was. He was already in his twenties and he knew everybody in town, everyone. He knew this man whose name was Aharon Shapira. Aharon Shapira was a man who had fantastic hands. He knew how to build things. He had fantastic ideas what to do. We went, me, my brother, we went to that 2/6
house to show Aharon what he can do if he can build a bunker under that house. After a couple of hours, Aharon had a plan. Aharon had a plan that he is going to build a bunker underneath the part of the house that didn't have any basement. If you take a house which was built out of stone, I think, and since the house was on a slant, the front of the house was dirt and the back of the house had a basement. So he intended to build the bunker in the front of the house where he had to take out the dirt. Q: He had to dig? A: He had to dig. There was a wall. The way you dig, you removed that wall from the basement to that area and you dig out all the dirt and there was a well, there was a dry well in the back of the house. He said: "We are going to dig out all the dirt and then we are going to put a structure inside out of wood. The entire structure was wood - the sides, bottom and top. Then take some of this dirt. Most of the dirt will go into the well, into the dry well. So at night, we would carry that dirt from the...one of us would look out on the street and the rest of us would carry it on our shoulders. Q: Who were "the rest of us?" A: We had more people. We had my brother, Aharon, Mr. Schwartz and his son Arnold, and there was a cousin of Arnold. His name was Manek Berkwerk. Then there was another man called Ekstein who was a cousin of Mrs. Schwartz. We all started to dig that area. We carried it. We didn't work during the day, only at night. So we had to dig out that area and the area was thirty feet long. The length of the house was ten feet wide and six feet high. But what he did is he made it lower and at the same time, he put the dirt on the top of the bunker so there will be dirt between the floor of the house and the bunker. He put in five feet of dirt on the top. When they break in through the floor, they will see dirt. At the same time, he put five feet of dirt against the wall that was from the cellar. Then he covered the entire floor of the cellar with dirt. At the corner, he made a plate, a cement plate and that cement plate was the entrance into the bunker. Each time Ivan Bur would come to open the bunker, he would dig up the dirt and then he would lift up that cement plate, two by two feet,and this is the way there was the entrance. It was 3/6
camouflaged in the basement so nobody knew which way would be the entrance. Aharon was a genius of a person. First of all, we had to live there and at that time, we had sixteen people to go into that bunker - the families, our family and Schwartz' family, the other people. There were sixteen people. We also took Mr. Kopferberg who had that grocery store. Since he had a grocery store, he had money. So we can pay. Q: And he has groceries. A: He has groceries and money so we can pay Ivan the money. So we had sixteen people to go into that bunker. What he did, Aharon, he put a stove in the bunker, connected the gas from upstairs because the house had gas, but he connected it before the meter so it wouldn't register on the meter. The same thing he did with electricity. He connected all the wiring into the bunker through the chimney and this way it wouldn't be shown on the meter, electric meter that somebody uses electricity. Besides that, the house had no water and the house didn't have any toilet facilities. They had an outhouse. Aharon had to devise a way for us to get water because it was impossible for Ivan to carry water for us into the bunker and it was impossible for him to carry anything else if we have to go to the toilet. He built a toilet and he built it out of wood, out of planks, narrow planks of wood that he would run underneath the basement, underneath the cellar into a sewer because there was a sewer outside and he ran that from the bathroom. He slanted it. So when he had the toilet made, we had a step. To have water, he built two cisterns. Cisterns are holes in the group, about four feet deep, two of them. So every time it rained, these holes were filled up and we had water. Every time we had to go to the toilet, we had a pail and we would use that pail to wash down everything. Q: He wasn't an engineer? A: He was not an engineer. He was not an educated man, but he was brilliant. Besides that, how do you get air? Through the sewer, we got the air and then he connected, there was a chimney in the house, so he extended the chimney into the basement, into the bunker. The hot air would come out and the cold air would go through. Naturally there wasn't much air. We were all sitting 4/6
naked practically. We were all in shorts and women were only in panties and in bras, but still we had some air to breathe. Through the chimney, he connected a bell with a wire so that when they pulled a lever, the chimney lever upstairs,that bell downstairs would ring when danger was coming or we had signals. One ring was danger. Two rings was fine, the danger was over. Three rings was when he was going to open the bunker. Q: How long did it take? A: It took three months to build that bunker [m]y brother found a man in the ghetto who had previously had a building supply business and his name was...i just don't remember now, but I do. It doesn't matter. He paid him. Aharon gave him a list. He told him what he needed. Ivan got a horse and buggy and my brother paid everything there. Ivan came there and he picked up all this wood, all the supplies he needed and he brought it to the house and he left it in the basement, in the cellar. But to mislead the neighbours, he bought extra materials, so he can start to build a fence. He was walking around knocking and building the fence so the neighbours would think that he bought this material for the fence. It went well. It lasted three months. And then the ghetto was about to be liquidated and the ghetto became liquidated in April of 1943. Q: May. A: May of 1943, okay. You know better because you have read this thing. It's possible. But I thought it was April. It must have been early May or something like that. Anyway, when my brother saw that the...just before the ghetto was liquidated, my brother went into the ghetto and he picked up my mother and he brought her in. Q: You already knew that the ghetto is going to be liquidated in a few days? A: Oh yes. We anticipated the ghetto would be liquidated in January yet. We didn't know when. Q: At that time, you already knew what's going on, what are they doing with the Jews that they are taking? A: We knew we were doomed already. Anybody who had any place to go to hide, they were hiding. 5/6
Q: But you knew about exterminations? A: We knew that they took away my sister to be killed. This we knew. We didn't know about the camps. We didn't know that my family was taken to Belzec. We didn't know about Belzec. We knew that they didn't take them for a ride. They didn't take my grandfather, seventy-five-year-old grandfather, for a ride. We knew, but we didn't know where. I was still in the labour camp. Right after the liquidation of the ghetto, my brother told Ivan to come to take me because he was afraid already because the ghetto was liquidated already and at that time, there were no Jews walking the streets and he was afraid I should walk by myself to the bunker. He sent Ivan. He came to my camp and he saw me and he said: "I'm going to meet you tonight at eight o'clock at a certain place." And he did meet me there. There was a complication. He thought there was a German man following us so he took me into a Ukrainian camp that he used to work at one time and we waited there for the man to pass by and eventually I came into the bunker. When I came into the bunker, it was finished. It was functioning and Ivan lived upstairs with his wife. Source: Yad Vashem Archives O.3-7605 6/6