Make Room for Ukraine Adoption: An Hour in the Catacombs

Today we went to see the Catacombs outside the village of Adzhimuskay which is a short drive from Kerch. The Catacombs were once a limestone quarry used to build parts of Kerch from the 1830's or so. Over the years about 9 KM, - over 5 1/2 miles worth of land had been dug out with numerous tunnels all connected. In World War II the Nazi's had intended to drive the Soviets out of Kerch to control the strait connecting the Azov and Black Seas, which would have given Hitler a valuable shipping alternative in the region. The Wehrmacht garrison began occupying Kerch in November 1941. The Soviet Red Army had been starting to use the old quarry as a hiding place. In May 1942 a siege by Hitler's Wehrmacht began and it lasted until October 30, that year. In early July the Soviets defeated the Wehrmacht and for a short while seemed to be winning, however they ran out of food, sustainable water and ammunition.

For the next three months the group of up to 13,000 at its peak began a resistance to capture as their last hope of defense. There had been no advance planning of extra food or water so getting these became missions in and of themselves. For light, they burned old tires, and scrounged up wire to run a few lamps off of an old tractor used in the limestone mining process. That tractor is still down there. They resorted to eating livestock which was war casualties, and when the meat was gone, they boiled the skins and bones as soup. They had a salt and a sweet water well for awhile until the Nazi's polluted them - they were located outside of the quarry and indefensible. To obtain water they. relied on condensation of the limestone 10-16 meters down - 33-50 feet underground, which would give less than a quart of water per day, that they gave water only to their hospital patients. One girl named Maria had successfully carried many buckets of water from further away back for the patients, however she was eventually shot by the Nazi's. They had an operating room to remove bullet fragments and a recovery ward. The patients got the most water daily - received about a tablespoon of water per day. Those not in the recovery ward were allowed to wipe their lips once a day on a damp cloth. The air temperature in the quarry at their depth runs between 45 and 52 degrees year round. This was the only thing working in the favor of the people since it put less of a demand for water on them. During the resistance the Nazi's bored holes into the quarry and pumped gas down - the same as which was used in Auschwitz for example. In one day over 1,000 of the Red Army forces were gassed. The resistance forces fashioned blankets to cordon off parts of the quarry when they suspected that the Nazi's were boring more holes. This resistance crumbled on October 30, 1942 at which only a few survivors of the 13,000 who started remained. There are 2 mass graves underground with about 3,000 dead beneath the large marble slabs. I've never been to a death camp before but this network of limestone tunnels qualifies as one.

This part of Kerch history was covered up by the Stalin government and only hinted at during the Khrushchev years. In the 1980's it become more widely known around Ukraine and Russia.

The resolve and resourcefulness of the defenders of this quarry in their tremendous adversity is awe inspiring.

The heroism of the Red Army and citizens of Kerch and Adzhimuskay was commemorated in the monument atop Mt. Mithridates which we showed in our last post.

Here are a few pictures, we will add some that our facilitator took later on.