Chaim Farkash

Testimony of Chaim Farkash, born in Mukacevo, Czechoslovakia, 1925, regarding his experiences in the Mukacevo Ghetto, Auschwitz and a death march Hasidic family; his father owns a grocery store. Hungarian occupation; detention of the family in a prison in Budapest; refugees from Poland tell about the murder of Jews; German occupation and implementation of anti-Jewish legislation; Germans' order to establish a hotel to quarter SS soldiers in a hall that was used for the reception of large audiences in a hasidic rebbe's courtyard; forced contributions; the Jewish community does not manage to uphold the payments; deportation of the Jewish establishment along with the Judenrat members who also did not succeed in the mission of forced contributions; deportation of a group of rabbis to Auschwitz following their refusal to sign a statement saying that Jews use blood for ritual purposes; appointment of Zigelshtein as the head of the Judenrat after he promised that the Jews would be sent to a labor camp; labor with his family in a hospital in the Mukacevo Ghetto; liquidation of the hospital and transfer of its residents to a brick factory; deportation in train cars to Auschwitz-Birkenau; labor unloading Jews' suitcases; witness buries Jewish ritual objects that he found on the ground; keeping the religious commandments, labor cleaning a kitchen; secretly receives food from his German commander; death march in the direction of Gleiwitz camp, January 1945; transport by train in the direction of Flossenbuerg camp; death of many inmates due to starvation and diseases; transport in passenger trains during Allied forcs air-raids; continuation of the death march; help and encouragement from a German soldier; liberation by the US Army in the forests of Bavaria. Return to Mukacevo and search for relatives; move to a DP camp in Austria; aliya to Eretz Israel on the "Dov Hoz" ship.