Volunteer Nadzieja Batory, 20 years old, born in Plaszówka and resident in Ostrów, district of Dubno, wołyńskie voivodeship.
I am the daughter of a settler. On 10 February 1940 I, my husband and our entire family were deported to Russia. They drove us to the station in Zdołbunów, where we spent a whole week without being given any food. I fell ill and they took me to hospital, saying that once I recovered I would rejoin my family. But my family was sent to Russia. I spent a week in hospital. When I got well, the NKVD came round and said: – Get ready, you will go to your family. They took me to the station in Zdołbunów and loaded me onto a wagon in which I traveled for three weeks. Throughout this whole time I was thrice given 500 grams of bread, and also some soup, which was supposed to last me for the full three weeks. They took me to a labor camp in the Gorkovsky Oblast, near Sucha Bezwodna station, at the seventeenth marker. I was forced to work loading logs onto railway cars. The wood was floating knee-deep in water, and my group would have to fulfill the norm – shift a ton or so of wood – in an hour and a half. As for food, we would receive 400 grams of bread daily and a salty fish soup twice. They released me on 8 September 1941, and I set out to rejoin my family. I finally made it to the Arkhangelsk Oblast, to the Cherevkovo Region. When I reached the settlement, I found that my husband was ill, while all the other members of my family had died. My mother and father, sister and brother-in-law, and two children – all were dead. Myself, my husband, and all the other Poles got together and paid 50 rubles each for rail transport to Katagorgan; my husband died soon after our arrival there. I was then taken to the kolkhoz of Kizaszark, where I spent a week; the Soviets would give us 350 grams of millet flour. I fell ill for a second time, and they sent me to the hospital in Zjadyn. I was sick for a month, and when I left hospital I was sent back to the kolkhoz. There was the wife of a settler from my village – her husband, who was in the military, came for her, and they took me with them. We traveled to the station of Kermine. Upon our arrival, we were taken care of by other Poles. They put us on a train that took us to Persia, to the city of Tehran, where I enlisted in the Women’s Auxiliary Service.