1. Personal data (name, surname, rank, age, occupation, marital status):
Lieutenant Bolesław Bińczak, 34 years old, teacher, married.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
On 10 July 1940 I was deported from the internment camp in Kalvariya (Lithuania).
3. Name of the camp, prison or forced labor site:
Camps in Kozelsk and Gryazovets.
4. Description of the camp, prison etc. (grounds, buildings, housing conditions, hygiene):
Former monastery buildings – generally warm, dark, cramped and damp. The internees killed many bugs. We had baths often enough.
5. The composition of POWs, prisoners, exiles (nationality, types of crimes, intellectual and moral standing, mutual relations etc.):
Up to 1,000 of officers, 1,400 non-commissioned officers and police officers, 200 gendarmes and approx. 200 civilians. Poles, Jews.
6. Life in the camp, prison etc. (daily routine, working conditions, work quotas, remuneration, food, clothes, social and cultural life etc.):
We were counted twice a day, in the morning and in the evening. Wake-up was at 6.00 a.m., curfew at 10.30 p.m. Food twice a day, boiled water in the evening. The food which we received from July to November 1940 was bearable – a lot of herrings, which we couldn’t eat in the summer; from November 1940 to March 1941 the food was worse – we had beetroot soup five times a week. We received 800 grams of bread. We ate the same kind of groats for months. As for clothes, they were issued mainly to those who worked in the bathhouse or kitchen, to pavers, carpenters, etc. The work was compulsory for the privates and voluntary for the officers – in the kitchen, bathhouse, or carpenter’s workshop. From May 1941 on, the officers also had to perform some compulsory labor. As regards remuneration, the cooks, shoemakers, tailors and physical laborers received better food, and the tailors were additionally paid – but I don’t know how much.
Officers up to the rank of captain cleaned potatoes and fish for their own use in the kitchen.
Social life was limited to our own circles. The groups of Communists in particular wards had a negative effect on developing close relations.
Polish books – few. Bolshevik books, both in Polish and Russian – quite numerous. We had rather a lot of newspapers (Russian only). Cinema, lectures – all about Communism, three foreign movies.
7. The NKVD’s attitude towards Poles (interrogation methods, torture and other forms of punishment, Communist propaganda, information about Poland, etc.):
Interrogations during the day – or more often at night – lasted for three to four or six hours. Officers from the 2nd Department, policemen, political and social activists were very often interrogated, and virtually everyone was interrogated at least two or three times. We were threatened with deportation to Solovki, imprisonment of our families, execution by shooting, etc.
Propaganda: cinema, books, newspapers, lectures delivered by political commissars – the latter we barely listened to, as they were mainly almost illiterate ignoramuses whom we laughed at. They claimed that Poland would never be reborn. Our Commander-in-Chief and the Polish authorities were mocked. Communist Poland was propagated.
8. Medical assistance, hospitals, mortality rate (give the names of the deceased):
Poor medical assistance. Shortage of medicaments. The X-ray machine, repaired by our engineers (like many other things), had to be dismantled. Poles worked as doctors. We were quite often vaccinated. There was a flu epidemic, cases of typhoid fever – two or three. Up to eight people died: Second Lieutenant Dłuski, Cavalry Captain Słapa and others. Five went insane. There were two suicides, but I don’t remember the surnames.
9. Was there any possibility to get in contact with one’s country and family?
We were allowed to write letters for the first time in November 1940. We rarely got any answers, as they were kept for a long time by the NKVD. They were delivered after a long delay, either to the wards or sometimes during interrogations. We could write one letter per month. The internees received food and other packages from the Soviet and German- occupied territories.
10. When were you released and how did you manage to join the army?
I was released on 22 or 28 August in Gryazovets. On 29 August I was admitted to the Polish army.