Testimony of Mordechai Eichel Alon, born in Warsaw, Poland, 1931, regarding his experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto, on the Aryan side and in hiding places

Testimony of Mordechai Eichel Alon, born in Warsaw, Poland, 1931, regarding his experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto, on the Aryan side and in hiding places From a secular family with five children; his father owns a tannery and shoemaking workshop. Encouragement of the oldest son to escape to Tashkent early in the occupation; deportation to the Warsaw Ghetto; loss of their livelihood; typhus and hiding his parents' illness; mortality from starvation; responsibility for supporting the family falls on the three young children; work selling cigarettes; smuggling food into the ghetto; arrest by Polish and German policemen; beaten by a German; detention in the police station for two days; begging for alms in the Mokotow quarter; rumors regarding Treblinka; "Aktion" and deportation of his parents, sister and brother; life with his brother on the Aryan side; collection of property from apartments in the ghetto and selling it outside the ghetto; rumors regarding liquidation of the ghetto; leaving the ghetto, March 1943; murder of his brother outside the walls; joins forces with another orphan boy; survival on the streets; digging a pit and making a hiding place; integration into a Jewish underground unit in hiding by a female member; life in hiding with help from relief money; writes a personal journal; transfer to different hiding places; hiding in a sewer after the Warsaw Polish Uprising. Transfer to an orphanage in Lublin; joins Hashomer Hatzair; move to Sosnowiec; move to DP camps in Germany; unsuccessful aliya attempt to Eretz Israel on the ship, "Theodor Herzl", detention in Cyprus; reunion with his brother from the Soviet Union, 1990.