Edward Anders

19 Months in a Cellar Edward Anders

After losing most of their families in the Holocaust, 4 Jews in Liepaja/Latvia are hidden by a brave gentile couple (Roberts and Johanna Seduls), who build a hiding place in the cellar of an apartment building in the center of town and provide handguns and a radio for the Jews. Gradually 7 other Jews join them after hair-raising escapes. At first all are elated, but as the months go by and the Red Army fails to capture the city, relations become more and more strained by crowding, food shortages, air raids, police searches, and other almost daily scares. Tragically, the rescuer Roberts Seduls is killed by a Soviet shell two months before the end of the war. Liberation-if that is the word-by the Red Army comes only after German capitulation on May 9, 1945.