HERSHEL'S
BUNKER

How One Family Survived The Holocaust

Poland 1939–1945

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The Ressler Family

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Saved by the Świetoń Family

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A True Story of Courage & Compassion

The Story

Hidden beneath a farmhouse floor,
a Jewish family waited for the war to end.

In the Nazi-occupied Polish countryside, a gentile farming family — the Świetoń family — was convinced by Hershel the eldest son to hide 3 sisters for a couple of weeks. This turned into 2 years of hiding in a bunker they all constructed beneath their barn, risking everything to save them.

Hershel's Bunker is an interactive website that brings this extraordinary true story to life through illustrated landscapes, first-person testimonies, and an immersive chapter-by-chapter narrative.

Built on survivor testimonies archived by the USC Shoah Foundation, this experience transforms history into something you can feel.

INSIDE THE EXPERIENCE

Eight immersive chapters told through witness testimony, illustrated scenes, and interactive maps.

Ch. 1 — Life Before the War

Interactive Map · Poland 1939–1945

Ch. 2 — War Begins

Survivor Testimony

First-person video accounts from Murray Ressler and Rose Kohn — from the archives of the USC Shoah Foundation.

Painterly World

Every scene is rendered as an oil painting — farmhouses, forests, wartime roads — transporting visitors into occupied Poland.

Interactive Navigation

A zoomable map of southern Poland anchors the journey. Explore locations, chapters, and "Insights" that deepen each moment.

In Their Own Words

"Pietrek comes in crying. says, Hersh got killed, he says. Come home. I'll take care of you. So they were compassionate."

— Murray Ressler, Survivor

The villages of Różanka, Niewodna, and Frystак in the Subcarpathian region of Poland — each location in the story can be explored on the interactive map, grounding testimony in real geography.

Videos Copyright USC SHOAH FOUNDATION — Institute for Visual History and Education For educational use and distribution