![]() The people in hiding also had to gather food and fuel to survive the long winter in a hostile environment. In Nicola's view, it was practically impossible for a group of untrained citizens without professional equipment (thermal clothing, electric lamps, etc.) to exceed Siffre's record. It was months before he was back to his old self. At the end of the experiment, Siffre was a psychologically broken man. The combination of isolated life and lack of daylight took its toll. The Frenchman did this as an experiment for the American space institute NASA, which wanted to gain knowledge about the consequences of living in isolation. Michel Siffre is the official record holder with his 205 day stay in the Midnight Cave in Texas. After his first visit to the Cave of the Priest, he could not get the story of the hiders out of his mind. Never before had he heard that people had lived under the ground for so long without interruption. Nicola was even more astonished than he already was. They had lived in the Cave of the Priest for about a year. Their community in hiding totalled 38 people, including a two-year-old boy and a 75-year-old grandmother. They would have lived in the cave together with other families in 19. A local speleologist then told him that in 1991 he had accompanied a Jewish family from Canada in an attempt to visit the cave. He would visit the cave several times in the years that followed, but it was not until 1997 before he found out more. The story of the Jewish people in hiding gripped Nicola after his return to New York. However, there were also people who claimed that the Jews in the cave had disappeared and were never seen again. There were rumours that after the expulsion of the Germans, people had crawled out of the cave covered with mud. He spoke to several residents in nearby places, but nobody could give him any clarity. Curious to find out exactly what had happened here during the war, Nicola went above ground to investigate. His guides told him that Jews had been hiding here during the Second World War. A millstone and partly intact masonry walls proved to him that these were not abandoned belongings of fellow speleologists who mapped out this part of the cave in 1963. ![]() Source: András Hegedűs / Panoramia.Īt the bottom he found old shoes and buttons. The sinkhole in which the entrance of the Cave of the Priest is located. To the amazement of the American, there were unmistakable traces of long-term human habitation in this hard-to-reach place. In order to be able to find their way back easily, the cave researchers glued pieces of pink tape to the wall every 3 to 5 yards. This space was only 405 yards away from the base camp of the speleologists, but the road to it was almost a maze. After descending through a shaft that gives access to the underground system of corridors, local guides took Nicola to a part of the cave called "Khatki" (small house). The entrance is in a weed-covered sinkhole, amidst vast wheat fields littering this part of Ukraine. The entrance to the underground cave system, which with a length of more than 77 miles is the fourteenth largest in the world.Ībove ground there is nothing to see of the gigantic underground labyrinth. The cave is popularly known as Popowa Yama, or Cave of the Priest as it was previously located on the land of a local priest. The experienced speleologist visited three of these caves, of which Ozerna (about 280 miles southwest of Kiev) was the last. In the west of the former Eastern Bloc country there are seven large gypsum eaves in which impressive crystals have formed. It was in 1993, two years after the fall of the Soviet Union, that Chris Nicola was one of the first Americans to conduct research in the underground world of Ukraine. The American speleologist Chris Nicola discovered their remarkable story of survival. Nevertheless, several Jewish people in hiding in Ukraine during World War II would have lived continuously underground for much longer, namely 344 days. Living so long in constant darkness and isolation, without any sense of day or night, requires unimaginable perseverance, both mentally and physically. With this he set an official record, because never before would someone have lived for so long underground. In 1972, the French speleologist Michel Siffre spent 205 days without interruption in a cave in Texas.
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