Testimony of Mordekhai Brefman, born in Krasnik, 1923, regarding his experiences in the Krasnik Ghetto, labor camps in Poland and Germany and the Polish Army

Testimony of Mordekhai Brefman, born in Krasnik, 1923, regarding his experiences in the Krasnik Ghetto, labor camps in Poland and Germany and the Polish Army Situation of the Jews of Krasnik after the entry of the Germans on the day before Yom Kippur, 1939; kidnapping youths for forced labor, transferring them to labor camps in the surrounding area, and killing them a short time afterwards; release from the Janow Lubelski camp thanks to lobbying by the heads of the Krasnik community; deportation of the educated Jews to Auschwitz, Treblinka and Majdanek death camps; the Krasnik Ghetto; Judenrat activities; concentration of the local Jews into the Krasnik Ghetto; the ghetto is surrounded by Ukrainian police and Germans and the residents are deported for extermination; in hiding between two double walls in the ghetto during the “Aktion”; jumps off a truck en route to mass murder in the forest; Skret labor camp; labor digging subterranean storehouses, and the German preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union; escape during deportation to Germany for forced labor; wanderings among the villages and towns; meets Red Army soldiers; enlists in the Polish Army; participates in the liberation of cities and towns in Poland; deserts the Polish Army; arrest in Krasnik and released. Joins the Ichud kibbutz in Krakow; illegal aliya to Eretz Israel on the ship, "La Spezia", from a port in Italy, 1946.