Yitzkhak Bleier

Testimony of Yitzhak Bleier, born in Novi Vrbas, 1924, regarding his experiences in the Szeged Ghetto and joing the Yugoslavian partisans Life in Senta until 1941; Hungarian occupation, 1941; work building headstones; move to Budapest and life there; drafting of his brothers to a labor battalion and their deaths while imprisoned by the Russians; involved in Bnei Akiva youth movement; German occupation, 1944; ordered to Szeged; meeting his family in the Szeged Ghetto; forced labor clearing rubble and bodies, repairing railroad tracks, and at a German food distribution center; organizing with a group of Jewish Yugoslavians, September 1944; obtaining the weapons of Romanians guards and soldiers en route; appointment to squad commander; appointment by the Communists to one responsible for maintaining order in Senta; member of a field court that sentenced collaborators to death; drafted into the Yugoslavian Army and fighting the Germans, end of 1944. Release from the Yugoslavian Army; transfer through the Bericha to Hungary; marriage; aliya to Israel, end of 1948; absorption.