GROTTO WAS THEIR GHETTO

“When you cave [explore caves] there’s still the opportunity to be the first to see something,” said Chris Nicola, sitting with a panel before a captivated crowd at Long Island Jewish Medical Center (LIJ) last week. “You may find gold, buried treasure or a gem of a story.”
In 1993, Nicola, an internationally-known spelunker from Astoria, set out to explore the Gypsum Giant cave system of Western Ukraine, one of the world’s longest at 77 miles. He was there searching for lost relatives - Cossacks who had been persecuted under Communist Rule.
Nicola, a fellow at Manhattan’s world-renowned Explorers Club, found no evidence of his lineage, nor did he discover any precious riches. Instead, he encountered remnants of shoes, buttons from clothing and a family name scrawled across an expanse of rock. After 30 years of exploration, Nicola had stumbled upon a hiding place, the residuum of a year spent in dark, damp trepidation, evading the Nazis and a fate known to six million Jews and millions of others by the end of World War II.
Nicola ultimately came to the conclusion, through extensive research and a bit of luck, that the 38 people who had found refuge in Priest’s Grotto, a section of the Gypsum Giant, had likely fled the Cossacks and members of Nicola’s own family.
This week, 15 years after exploring the cave that was home to the Stermer family for 344 days over 60 years ago, Nicola will lead an expedition back to Priest’s Grotto. Among those returning to Western Ukraine for the first time since the war is Shunkale (Stermer) Hochman, 74, of Lake Success, Long Island.
“We have never forgotten the cave. We’re always in the cave. The cave has never left us,” said Hochman, who was nine years old when her grandmother proclaimed to the family, “We’re not going to the ghetto.”
Instead, the extended family of Jews sought shelter in another form of prison, one that was cold, deep and slippery - “not really an environment suitable for human inhabitation,” explained Dr. Kenneth Kamler, an explorer and attending physician at LIJ who will participate in the 10-day expedition.
The family was ultimately discovered in their first hiding place. In the darkness, however, everyone but Hochman’s mother, younger sister, an uncle, an aunt and a cousin were able to escape - the latter two were executed.
A relative suggested the family find a place “where no human has ever been. A virgin place, not on a map, no signs,” explained an elegantly dressed Hochman. Thus, the Stermers arrived at their new home, Priest’s Grotto, a place they illuminated with candlelight only a few minutes each day; a place the women and children never left for almost a year, hiding in the unforgiving blackness while the men - armed with a fake gun made of wood - ventured into the daylight to steal potatoes and barter with “Righteous Christians” sympathetic to their plight.
Through photographs provided by Nicola and fellow explorer and photographer Peter Lane Taylor, Hochman and her family were finally able to see, in vivid detail, the interior of the cave, right down to the slabs of stone they had carved out as beds.
Essentially, with their expensive equipment, Nicola and Taylor became the “eyes” for those who had ventured into Priest’s Grotto in their street clothing six decades earlier. The Stermers were in the cave for so long, Hochman said, that her sister, five at the time, forgot there was such a thing as the sun.
“If everything goes well,” Nicola said, “it’s going to help them find their voice and eyes again.”
In order to get to the grotto though, a team of elderly people, including Hochman, her husband, two uncles and a younger sister, will have to descend 23 feet down a metal conduit, ranging in diameter from five to two feet, and crawl 90 feet on their hands and knees through mud.
There’s the risk of falling, injured bones and hypothermia in an environment that hovers around 50 degrees with 50 percent humidity. No surprise then, that Kamler submitted a 14-page long medication request to LIJ, which is providing the expedition with medical supplies such as cardiac and respiratory drugs, monitors, defibrillators and intravenous fluids.
Of course, there’s also the mental trauma, just as influential on the mission as physical strain. Granis Stewart, an explorer and Emergency Room nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, will be the “ear” for survivors who wish to talk about their past and the new memories triggered by a return to the cave.
“We’re going to the cave so the world will know,” said Hochman, whose team will be accompanied by a film crew. Like her grandmother who published a book about life in Priest’s Grotto, Hochman would like her own grandchildren and great-grand children to know their family’s story.
For Nicola, who has traveled the world spelunking, this expedition is the culmination of 15 years of work topped off with a wealth of emotion as he is finally able to pass the Priest’s Grotto baton onto the Stermers, the cave’s rightful pioneers.
“One of the reasons I go caving is that adrenaline rush,” said Nicola, who, for many years explored underwater caves. “This doesn’t have that adrenaline rush. This is deeper inside, it’s a type of fulfillment for me - personal fulfillment.”