Testimony of Melech Yehuda, born in Bialystok, Poland, 1919, regarding enlistment into the Red Army and service in the labor battalions of the USSR

Testimony of Melech Yehuda, born in Bialystok, Poland, 1919, regarding enlistment into the Red Army and service in the labor battalions of the USSR Family background; life before the war; studies in Talmud Torah and later in a Hebrew school. German occupation for a week; prohibitions and restrictions; Soviet occupation; good attitude from the Russians; enlistment into the Red Army, May 1941; German occupation, June 1941; removal of eastern Poland soldiers and their transfer to labor battalions; work in the Volga River area; work in filling weapon bags; ignorance of what was happening in Bialystok; transfer to Ural District; garage work. The end of the war; repatriation to Poland, 1945; understanding that his family was murdered and receiving information about what happened during the war; joining the Dror movement; post-war anti-Semitism on the part of the Poles; return to Bialystok to look for relatives; murder of Jews on the way by Polish soldiers on trains; finding the ruined city; receiving information about the fate of his family; continuation of life after the war; Aliyah B in the direction of Eretz Israel; seizure by the British and exile to Cyprus; aliya to Israel; absorption and acclimatization.