Testimony of Moshe Becher, born in Krzeszowice, Poland, 1925, regarding his experiences in hiding in a hayloft and a bunker

Testimony of Moshe Becher, born in Krzeszow, Poland, 1925, regarding his experiences in hiding in a hayloft and a bunker Youngest child in a family with five children; learns in a yeshiva in Bilgoraj. Stay in a hospital in Bilgoraj and immediate air-raids on the hospital at the outbreak of the war; escape to his uncle; return to Krzeszow; burning of their home; escape from the Gestapo along with his brother, 1942; death of his brother; labor as a cowherd on a Volksdeutsche farm; sleeps in a cowshed due to fear of the Gestapo; hides in a pile of straw during the liquidation of the local Jews, November 1942; in hiding with his father in the hayloft of a non-Jewish acquaintance; departure of his father from the hiding place due to fear of the non-Jew; murder of his father, seven weeks later; agreement by the non-Jew to let the witness stay in the hiding place on condition of his conversion to Christianity; witness' symbolic baptism; stay in the home of the non-Jew at night in order to stay warm and goes up to a hiding place in their attic during the day; preparation of a bunker in pit for potatoes at the edge of the field; move to a bunker due to fear of the wife of the non-Jew, early 1943; life in the bunker; steals vegetables; return to the hayloft during a period of snow; labor threshing and studies religious books; return to the bunker in the spring; digs an anti-tank trench in the area of the bunker; move to a distant village with the help of Communists; work as a laborer, summer 1944; arrival of the Red Army, November 1944. Travel to Lublin and then to Krakow; preparations for aliya to Eretz Israel; wanderings in Europe for 18 months; aliya attempt to Eretz Israel; detention in Cyprus; settles in Gush Etzion; taken captive by the Jordanians.