Testimony of David Kirshner, born in Komarno, Czechoslovakia, 1920, regarding his experiences in a labor battalion in Koszeg, Krakow, Stary Oskol, in captivity in Morshansk and other places

Testimony of David Kirshner, born in Komarno, Czechoslovakia, 1920, regarding his experiences in a labor battalion in Koszeg, Krakow, Stary Oskol, in captivity in Morshansk and other places Life before the war; Zionist activities in Sopron; Levente (Hungarian youth organization) activities; discriminatory attitude in Levente. Drafted to a labor battalion in Koszeg, 13 October 1941; battalion life; transfer of the battalion to the Soviet front, July 1942; transfer to Krakow; meets a Jewish woman at the railroad station and receives information regarding the situation of the Jews in Poland; transfer to Gom by train; 1200 kilometer march to the front under the supervision of the Hungarian Army; robbery of Jewish possessions in Stary Oskol by the Hungarian gendarmerie; labor digging anti-tank trenches at the front in the vicinity of Voronezh; Kol Nidrei prayer on Yom Kippur; selection and deportation of the ill to Dorositz and their murder, November 1942; escape to the Soviet region across the Don river, late 1942; help to the Soviet forces; meets Soviet Jewish officers; injury; hospitalization in a hospital in Tambov; typhus; transfer to a POW camp, 13 March 1943; camp life including meeting Jewish, German and Hungarian POWs; medical treatment in Slavgorod near the Chinese border; transfer to Tyumen, March 1944; POW camp life including interrogations by the NKVD; writing a letter to Stalin; meets Rakosi Matthias, a Jewish-Hungarian Communist, in Moskow; transfer to Morshansk; POW camp life; transfer to Slavyansk; POW camp life; end of the war, 1945; liberation from captivity. Move to Bucharest; move to Budapest; work in Sopron; unsuccessful aliya attempt to Eretz Israel via Austria and Italy on the ship, "Kaf Gimel Yordei Hasira"; detention in Cyprus; aliya to Eretz Israel, 1946.