Survivor Testimonial

Dr. Kristine Keren was born October 38, 1935 in Lvov into a very wealthy Jewish family. They lived in a beautiful apartment overlooking a courtyard with fine furnishings and accessories. A live-in nanny cared for her and her younger brother,they also had a housekeeper.Her father was an educated man who owned a business selling textiles,she can remember when the Germans forced him to give them the keys to the store. Next they came to the apartment, with the officer sitting on her mother's piano bench he then told them that all of their belongings were now his. Her father begged for his family's lives,the officer then accepted a bribe and allowed them to live.She could no longer go outside to play and learned to hide both her brother and herself upon hearing the soldiers footsteps.Her father decided it was to dangerous to stay, the family began to run,moving nine times before getting to the ghetto.Her father begin digging a tunnel to the sewer through the basement in the house they were staying in. One day while digging he met a Polish sewer worker who said he would help to hide the family in return for a large sum of money.They spent fourteen months living in a sewer,described as a large river with two-foot sidewalks on both sides.The conditions were horrible,it was dark with large rats, the smell of sewer, very little food and keeping quiet so they wouldn't be found by the enemy.The sewer worker helped them to survive by smuggling food,blankets, newspapers,candles,books and medicine in his tool briefcase.Upon leaving the dark sewer her brother wanted to go back down, the daylight hurt his eyes.Everyone was very suspicious about Jews that had survived thinking they were German spys.With the sewer worker still helping them the family went to Krakow where her parents began working again and she and her brother went to school.The principal knew she was Jewish and told her mother to pretend to be Christian and they changed their name to a more Polish sounding name.She remembers her mother bringing home packages from the United States with food and blankets.Her father going daily to the Red Cross to check the list of survivors hoping to find a family member.At the age of sixty-three when giving this interview she stated she still has dreams running with her brother trying to escape,cannot step on a manhole,and the sound of footsteps in a German movie is very disturbing for her. "The sewer was like a city underground with tunnels and branches and smaller branches." "For the sake of the child lets say that she is a Christian not Jewish."