Testimony of Chagay Pesach Geri Gerges, born in Alexandrja, Poland, 1934, regarding his experiences as a forced laborer in a kolkhoz and in Karaganda in the Soviet Union

Testimony of Chagay Pesach Geri Gerges, born in Alexandrja, Poland, 1934, regarding his experiences as a forced laborer in a kolkhoz and in Karaganda in the Soviet Union Childhood in a liberal, religious, Zionist home in a Zionist town; youth group and Keren Hayesod activities; relations with the local Ukrainian population. Soviet occupation, 17 September, 1939; pogrom by the Ukrainians; organized Jewish defense, 14 April 1940; deportation to eastern Soviet Union by the NKVD; labor in a kolkhoz in Pririchuno; keeping kosher and observing religious holidays; hard labor of his father in a coal mine in Karaganda; liberation. Receiving medical help from the Red Cross, summer 1946; permission to return to Poland, to Biala; rescue of children and helping establish an orphanage; illegal crossing of the border via Czechoslovakia and Austria and arrival at Pirtan, Germany near Ulm; move to Marseilles together with 100 other children, 1947; receiving a collective visa issued by Aliya Bet; illegal aliya attempt on the ship, "Exodus", June 1947; deportation to Hamburg, Germany, and stay in the Emden camp and the Pfaffendorf camp; legal aliya on the ship, "Transylvania", 27 February, 1948; rapid acclimatization.