The Girl in the Green Sweater

Book excerpt: Based on the true story explored in the Academy Award–nominated film, In Darkness, this holocaust memoir is “a gripping account of survival and friendship” (Booklist). In 1943, with Lvov’s 150,000 Jews having been exiled, killed, or forced into ghettos and facing extermination, a group of Polish Jews daringly sought refuge in the city’s sewer system. The last surviving member this group, Krystyna Chiger, shares one of the most intimate, harrowing and ultimately triumphant tales of survival to emerge from the Holocaust. The Girl in the Green Sweater is Chiger’s heartwrenching first-person account of the fourteen months she spent with her family in the fetid, underground sewers of Lvov. The Girl in the Green Sweater is also the story of Leopold Socha, the group’s unlikely savior. A Polish Catholic and former thief, Socha risked his life to help Chiger’s underground family survive, bringing them food, medicine, and supplies. A moving memoir of a desperate escape and life under unimaginable circumstances, The Girl in the Green Sweater is ultimately a tale of intimate survival, friendship, and redemption. “With a powerful story and a keen voice, Chiger’s Holocaust survivor’s tale is a worthy and memorable addition to the canon.” —Publishers Weekly “Chiger’s exceptional story . . . stands out among the many Holocaust survival narratives as one that will touch the hearts of teens and adults alike and bring home the horrors of this very dark period in history.” —School Library Journal “Through the eyes of the child that Krystyna Chiger was in Lvov, Poland in 1939 we see the whole moral universe.” —Naomi Ragen, author of The Saturday Wife and The Covenant “[A] gripping memoir.” —Kirkus Reviews