1. Personal data:
Corporal Władysław Fajer, the State Police functionary, born 1903, married.
2. Methods of examination and torture applied during interrogations:
I was interrogated by the NKVD in the Włodzimierz Wołyński prison. The following methods were used during the interrogation: Apart from being threatened with death and a long term of imprisonment, I was pressed to sign a trumped-up account in which I was accused of acting as an anti-Soviet spy. The tortures I suffered: they stood me against the wall and threatened to shoot me.
3. Life in the forced labor camps, the organization of forced labor camps, work quotas:
a) place and terrain: the Komi Republic, the taiga, Vorkuta region.
b) living conditions: initially, for the first two weeks, we lived in the open air. Then I moved into a shanty where, lacking blankets and straw mattresses, I slept on the damp ground. At night the rain, which flowed down the bark and branches right into the bedding, and also the smoke coming from the fire spattered by rain drops often made it impossible to get any shut-eye. There were about 30 people living in the shanty. My situation became even worse when I was transferred by way of punishment beyond the river Abis: I lived in an almost unheated tent in temperatures dropping to 60 degrees Celsius below zero. I covered myself with drenched clothes, sleeping on a bunk made from logs.
c) food: our staple diet was 450 grams of whole wheat bread and a soybean soup made from wheat flour, with no fat or salt added.
d) working conditions: in summer, I worked from 6.00 a.m. to 8.00 p.m., and in winter from 6.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m. Following the conclusion of the agreement between Poland and the Soviet Union, the number of working hours was increased to 18. I worked in the taiga and tundra, in heavy rains and in temperatures below minus 60 degrees Celsius, in the mud of the spring thaw, throughout the day and in the night. To get to work we needed to cover a distance of [illegible] kilometers.
e) work quotas: a few examples. We were required to dig up 3.6 cubic meters of peat and carry it over 200 hundred meters (using wooden hand-barrows); to dig up 4.8 cubic meters of peat and cart it away to a distance of 200 hundred meters in a wheelbarrow; to clear an area of 60 square meters of a 1.3 meter-thick layer of snow; to construct 8 square meters of wall (carpentry); to lay 17 square meters of floor; to dig up 4 cubic meters of earth and cart it off to the railway embankment (a distance of up to 250 meters).
f) clothing: initially, I wore my own clothes. Later I received a leather hat, a jacket, padded pants, rubber boots made of car tires, and some underwear.
g) composition of prisoners: Poles made up the vast majority of prisoners. There were also Ukrainians, Belarussians and the Jews – about 800 people in total. Soviet citizens constituted almost half of all forced laborers. Polish prisoners included the Łuck
| district deputy-governor | Szerans | , Captain Mazur (an airman from | Wilno | ), state officials |
| and teachers. |
h) hygienic and sanitary conditions were very bad. There were no basic medicaments. Nor was there a real doctor. Those who were ill were given sick leave when they were running a fever of over 39 degrees Celsius. The sick lay in the barracks, which were dirty and infested with lice.
i) working hours: in summer, we worked from 16 to 18 hours a day and in winter from 13 to 16 hours a day. After the outbreak of the war against Germany, we had to work three hours longer.
j) entertainment and cultural life: none. On some rare occasions, newspapers were provided by chauffeurs and we read them in secret. In the tundra, I didn’t read a single printed word.
k) contact with the home country: I exchanged no letters with my wife, who had been deported along with our children to Kazakhstan.
l) the supervising authorities’ attitude towards Poles: we were beaten with rifle butts. A number of Polish prisoners were shot dead either for stepping into an out-of-bounds area (between the first and second lines of barbed wire), for stopping to rest – out of exhaustion –on the way to work, or for some unknown reason, simply on a whim. I don’t remember the names.
m) remuneration: I didn’t receive any remuneration in cash.
n) communist propaganda: there was no communist propaganda.
o) mortality in the camps: very high. It reached 50 percent. I would like to give the names of those who died: a Polish Army soldier from Pomerania, Cięgotura (he died of general exhaustion, having been forced to work when he was weak; he died in his tent after returning from work); a teacher from Poznań, Paweł Wiewórka; Henryk Gawroński, a military clerk from Biała Podlaska who worked in the fortress of Brześć nad Bugiem, and others.
p) life in the prison: from 16 June to 18 July 1941, I was detained in the Włodzimierz Wołyński prison.
r) living conditions: there were 43 people in a cell 8 meters square. The cells were filthy, stuffy, dark, damp and infested with lice. We were allowed to go to the toilet once a day, and once in four days we were allowed a half-hour walk.
s) food and sanitary conditions weren’t much different from those existing in the camps.
t) composition of prisoners: various. The majority were Jews who displayed communist preferences, but were on the road to being "cured" of the doctrines of Engels and Marks. I remember the escape of three prisoners. They escaped at night, taking advantage of the rain and darkness. I once saw an NKVD functionary beating a prisoner for lying down on the ground. The NKVD man kicked the prisoner, beat him with his fists and keys, and then locked him up in a dark cell.