MARIAN GRUSZECKI

1. Personal data (name, surname, rank, Field Post Office no., age, occupation, civil status):

Gunner Marian Gruszecki, 35 years of age, a farmer by occupation, married, Field Post Office no. 161.

2. Date and circumstances of arrest:

I was arrested on 27 September 1939 in the settlement of Kowardzieki, district of Brześć nad Bugiem, poleskie voivodeship, because I was the son of a military settler (also arrested), while my family was deported in 1940.

3. Name of the camp, prison, place of forced labor:

A camp in the Irkutsk Oblast. We had to walk seven kilometers to the township in which we worked, Łoporok.

4. Description of the camp, prison, etc. (grounds, buildings, living conditions, hygiene):

The buildings were made of logs, and were located in both mountainous and forested areas. The conditions were lousy – bugs, lice, filth and disease.

5. Social composition of POWs, prisoners, deportees (nationality, category of crimes, intellectual and moral level, mutual relations, etc.):

Civilian deportees, military settlers, functionaries of the State Forestry Service, and civil servants. Everyone was of a high moral and intellectual level. Our mutual relations were good.

6. Life in the camp, prison, etc. (the course of an average day, working conditions, quotas and norms, wages, food, clothing, social and cultural life):

We would be woken up at 6.00 a.m., and marched off to work at 7.00 a.m. The conditions were very difficult. I received 80 rubles per month as remuneration for my labor. The food that you were given depended on work performed – if you carried out 100 percent of the norm, you would receive 800 grams of bread, fatless soup and tea without sugar (three times a day). I was not given any new clothes, and had to make do with what I had taken from home. Mutual relations were good, and cultural life was acceptable.

7. Attitude of the authorities, NKVD towards Poles (methods of interrogation, torture, punishments, Communist propaganda, information about Poland, etc.):

Terrible. They interrogated us only at night, and the methods they used were horrifying – it was standard procedure to have a gun put to your head, or get beaten and locked up in the punishment cell. They tried to win us over for the communist cause, saying that the democratic states must disappear, and that we should not think about Poland, for it had ceased to exist for good.

8. Medical care, hospitals, mortality rate (provide the surnames of those who perished):

There was a doctor, but he had no drugs. Hospital was a one-way ticket. The following died right before my eyes: Stanisław Garczyk, Stanisław Zębski, Władysław Posłuszny, Paweł Ejstyner, Wiktor Szymański, Mikołaj Żarkiewicz, and a great many others whose names I don’t remember, but not a day passed without 15 to 20 men dying. All those whom I have mentioned were from the same township as I.

9. Was it at all possible to keep in touch with the home country and your family? If yes, then what contacts were permitted?

No.

10. When were you released and how did you get through to the Polish Army?

I was released from prison on 23 September 1941 and used my own ingenuity to get through to the Polish Army.

Official stamp, 17 March 1943