Testimony of Baruch Kobelski, born in Sejny, 1918, regarding his experiences in a POW camp in Germany and his escape to the Soviet Union

Testimony of Baruch Kobelski, born in Sejny, 1918, regarding his experiences in a POW camp in Germany and his escape to the Soviet Union Serves at the Polish-German front in the Polish Army; capture by the Germans during the defense of the Deblin fort; held prisoner in Stalag-3 a POW camp in Luckenwalde near Berlin; separation of the Jewish POWs from the Polish POWs into a special camp; impersonates a Polish man called Bronislav Kobelski; his appointment as a translator; camp life; relations with Jews; relations with a German subofficer; execution of150 Jewish POWs; transfer to Warsaw; escape from the railroad station in Warsaw; stay with a Polish antisemitic engineer; transfer to the other side of the Lithuanian border with the help of the engineer's wife; receives help from the Jewish community in Mariapol; escape to Russia after the outbreak of hostilities between the Red Army and Germany; is drafted into a labor battalion stationed at the front in Stalingrad, and labor digging anti-tank ditches; is sentenced to ten years imprisonment for propaganda against the Soviet regime; receives a pardon in a camp near the Mongolian border, November 1945. Witness is repatriated to Poland, March 1946; from Poland he goes to Austria as the head of a Beitar group; involvement in Bericha activities as a deputy commander in a DP camp in Salzburg; aliya to Eretz Israel via Italy and Cyprus, 1947.