Mordekhai Martin Shpigel

Testimony of Mordechai Martin Spiegel, born in Brezovec, Czechoslovakia, 1921, regarding his experiences in Biel, Uzhorod and in the Czech Army His childhood in Biel in a family of hasidim; move to Uzhorod to learn in a yeshiva at the age of 15; [revocation of] their business licenses, 1938; witness leaves the yeshiva in order to help his family earn a livelihood; work in wood-carving and the lumber trade. Draft to a battalion of Hungarian soldiers in the Hungarian Army, November 1942; life in the battalion including labor digging guard posts and labor laying railroad tracks near the Polish border; escape with four friends, October 1943; joins the Czech Army; attached to a battalion of couriers [in the Czech Army], most of whom were Jewish soldiers, in the Stanislawow area, after undergoing interrogations; crosses the Slovakian-Polish border en route to Krakow while engaged in combat, October 1944; surrender of the German Army, 15 May 1945; entrance into Prague in a victory march, after the German surrender. Attempt to organize an army in Czechoslovakia [for] aliya to Eretz Israel; aliya to Israel, 1949.