The Secret of Priest's Grotto

In 1942, as the Nazis intensified their hold on Eastern Europe, several Jewish families disappeared into the vast underground of Western Ukraine. The group ranged from grandmothers to toddlers, and for the next year and a half they lived, worked, ate, and slept in caves directly under the feet of those who would send them to their deaths.

Their extraordinary story was almost forgotten until an American caver came across the remnants of their underground asylum. It took many trips to the Ukraine over a period of ten years before the pieces of the story began to make sense.

The story of the caver's quest, enhanced by extraordinary underground photos, alternates with first person accounts of those who live through the ordeal. The result is one of history's most remarkable epics of survival.

Peter Lane Taylor with Christos Nicola
2007
64 pages, hardbound