Testimony of Avraham Farkas Talmi, born in Krasnovce, Czechoslovakia, 1920, regarding his experiences in Prague, Kyjov, aliya training in Ivancice and illegal immigration to Eretz Israel during the war

Testimony of Avraham Farkas Talmi, born in Krasnovce, Czechoslovakia, 1920, regarding his experiences in Prague, Kyjov, aliya training in Ivancice and illegal immigration to Eretz Israel during the war His childhood in Michalovce, where half of the city's population is Jewish; traditional family with six children; his father is a cattle merchant; his mother grows fruit in their yard; attends a public school until completion of high school, 1938; learns in a "heder" until his Bar Mitzvah; continuation of studues in Prague, November 1938. German occupation of Prague, March 1939; antisemitic atmosphere; leaves home en route to Eretz Israel with a youth movement; stay for a period in Kyjov and teaches Hebrew in the community; aliya training in Ivancice with refugees from the Sudetenland; arrival at the port of Tulcea, Romania; exchange for Germans who returned from Bessarabia, negotiated by a Viennese Jew named Stolper; difficult sailing on the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea, to Haifa on the "Atlantic" ship; taking control of the ship after the crew's refusal to continue. Capture of the ship by a British destroyer after a struggle; arrival in Haifa; explosion of the "Patria" ship and transfer to Atlit camp; resistance by youth movement members en route to Haifa and their deportation to a tropical Island in Mauritania; cultural life in Mauritania with help from South African Jews; enlists in the Czechoslovakian Army in Exile and military service in Egypt, 1942; deserts the army; joins a kibbutz; marriage; helps bring Hungarian Jews to Israel, 1948; entanglement with the authorities; return to Israel; work; studies and legal work.