The author has compiled this harrowing story of the survival in 1943 of some Jews in the sewers of their city from the hitherto private diaries of the survivors. In the Polish city of Lvov, a small band of Jews escaped into the network of tunnels in which they were to survive for 14 months with the city's waste, darkness, rats, damp and despair. Many died; some of cyanide in a mass suicide, some falling into the water and some of exhaustion. A baby was born and murdered by its mother. The group quarrelled, split into factions, and threatened each other at gun point. When they emerged, filthy, bent double, emaciated and unrecognizable, they opened their eyes and the world appeared blood red.