Testimony of Gershon Biderman, born in Lukow, 1921, regarding his experiences in Poland and the Soviet Union

Testimony of Gershon Biderman, born in Lukow, 1921, regarding his experiences in Poland and the Soviet Union His childhood; attends a Talmud Torah and studies in yeshivas; move to Lodz; work in his uncle's business. Outbreak of the war, 1939; watches over his relatives' property after they fled from Lodz; escape to Warsaw with a female cousin then by train to Lukow; escape with his older brother to the Russian occupied area; crosses the border with non-Jewish smugglers; capture and then escape from a transit camp to an uncle in Brest Litowsk; move with his brother to Lvov, 1940; their capture by the Soviets and transfer to a Polish military prison, June 1940; separation from his brother and deportation to a distant Soviet concentration camp on the Finnish border; labor logging trees; very meager food and harsh labor under strict Russian supervision; wanderings between camps in which most of the Russian inmates are antisemitic; German air-raids, June 1941; evacuation on foot to Gorki and then by train to Bukara; liberation. Work in a wine factory and then in a leather goods factory where he becomes the foreman; life and the alienation between the local Jewish community and the Russian community; return to Poland, 1945; membership in a Zionist group; move to Krakow; counselor in the Gordonia movement; illegally crosses the border into Poland, 1946; aliya to Eretz Israel via Austria, Germany, Czechoslovakia and Italy; sneaks onto an illegal immigration ship; capture of the ship, deportation and detention in Cyprus, May 1947; aliya to Israel and reunion with his brother, October 1948.