1. Deportee
2. Personal data:
Zofia Bukowicka-Lipska, born in 1911, the wife of an officer.
3. Date and circumstances of arrest:
I was arrested while performing construction work at the Soviet airport in the township of Porubanek near Wilno, where I was employed as a laborer.
4. Name of the camp, prison, place of forced labor:
I was deported to the Altai Krai in the USSR.
5. Description of the camp, prison:
The place to which we were banished comprised a small number of barracks located near a state-owned farm that bred cattle and pigs. It was in the steppe, the buildings were made of [illegible] (bricks baked from straw and cow manure), unwhitewashed, infested with bugs and lice, with no household appliances. The hygienic conditions were very bad, and there was no medical care.
6. Social composition of POWs, prisoners, deportees:
The deportees were women, children and the elderly, viewed by the Soviet authorities as criminals. All guilty of the political crime of having Polish nationality and citizenship. The deportees came mainly from the intelligentsia, with the majority being the wives and family members of officers. Our moral caliber was very high, and mutual relations left nothing to be desired.
7. Life in the camp, prison:
The average day would have an uncomplicated course. After getting up, we would cook and eat some mean food – purchased through the sale or exchange of clothes and personal items – and then leave for work, which lasted from sunup until late in the evening, with an hourly break for dinner. Wages were calculated in relation to the so-called norm, and totaled between 2.5 and 6 rubles if you carried out 300 – 500 percent of the norm, which would only have been possible if you had also toiled at night. Our work consisted in making bricks, mowing meadows, harvesting crops, carting hay from the fields and delivering it to the train station, etc.
8. Attitude of the authorities, NKVD towards Poles:
We received no clothes, while the only foodstuff that we were allowed to purchase was bread – provided, however, that we fulfilled the quota: 600 grams for a working adult and 300 grams for a child, whereas children received bread solely if their mothers carried out the norm. No cultural or social life was possible, for we were forbidden to gather or meet in larger groups.
The attitude of the authorities and the NKVD towards us was negative. They made life thoroughly unpleasant with their constant searches and interrogations, during which they would ridicule Poland and its government, assuring us that we would remain in the USSR forever. They also encouraged us to marry the locals, and said that we had been cheated by our government. Interrogations were accompanied by exceptionally foul language and uncouth epithets. Throughout this time they implemented an intensive propaganda campaign aimed at convincing us of the merits of the communist system.
9. Medical care, hospitals, mortality rate:
Medical care was non-existent. The hospital was some 50–60 kilometers distant and therefore practically inaccessible, not least because of the complete lack of transportation. There was a nurse more or less 20 kilometers away, but she had neither drugs nor any medical knowledge.
The mortality rate – amongst children in particular – was frightening. Within three months, our group of 450 families lost 180 children and senior citizens, that is approximately 10–12 percent of the total number of deportees and around 50–60 percent of all the children.
I do not remember the surnames of the deceased, for they were people whom I had only just got to know. My beloved ten-year-old daughter, the sole family member who had accompanied me on my deportation, was amongst those who died.
10. Was it at all possible to keep in touch with the home country and your family? If yes, then what contacts were permitted?
Contact with the Homeland and my family was difficult, practically non-existent; I myself didn’t receive any letters, but I heard that a few people did.