History channel actually has an incredible history story!

GingerCoffee · Apr 27, 2014

Jews hid for more than a year in a cave in the Ukraine during WWII. I'd never heard this story, and it was absolutely incredible. I'm floored.

They lived in near total darkness, only lighting their scarce candles to cook.

Wiki summary

HuffPo: 'No Place On Earth': Jewish Cave Survivors Of WWII 'Lived Like Robinson Crusoe' (INTERVIEW)

The film: No Place on Earth

Nat-Geo: The story

In 1993, veteran caver Chris Nicola became one of the first Americans to explore Ukraine's famous Gypsum Giant cave systems. While there, during an expedition into the tenth longest cave in the world, his team came across two partially intact stone walls and other signs of habitation. Local residents, who revere the Gypsum Giants as national treasures, told Nicola that a group of Ukrainian Jews spent months in the cave evading the horrors of the Holocaust. No one seemed to know who had survived, however, and some questioned whether any had seen daylight again. Fascinated, Nicola grew determined to learn how people with no prior caving experience or specialized equipment were able to live in such a hostile environment for so long.
Ten years later, after an extensive search, Nicola located six of the cave survivors, most of them members of the extended Stermer family. The story they told was even more remarkable than the legend Nicola had heard while in the Ukraine, involving not one cave hideout, but two, and nearly two years spent underground. "There may not be another story like this," explains Michlean Amir, reference archivist of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. "Such a large group of people avoided digging their own graves or being shipped off to concentration camps by successfully utilizing a natural phenomenon."
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I want to see it again.

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GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

History channel actually has an incredible history story!

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GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

History channel actually has an incredible history story!

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