1. Personal data (name, surname, rank, age, profession, and marital status):
Henryk Stanisław Januszkiewicz, 30 years old, bookkeeper, married, one child.
2. Dates and circumstances of arrest:
I was arrested on 20 February 1940 in the city of Garbara, along with 11 people, for crossing the “border” (demarcation line).
3. Name of the camp, prison, forced labor site:
From 20 February to 17 March 1940 I stayed in the prison in Przemyśl, from 24 March 1940 until 6 July 1940 – in Dnepropetrovsk, and from 11 July to 23 July – in Kharkiv. From 24 July 1940 until 27 September 1941 I was on the way: Kharkov – Moscow – Arkhangelsk – Narjan-Mar – Pechora – Kozhva – Adzwa-Wom, then 190 kilometers to Abis on foot.
4. Description of the camp, prison etc. (premises, buildings, living conditions, hygiene):
Conditions in Przemyśl: there were 78 people in a cell that measured around 6 x 7 x 3 meters. There was terrible lousiness and no water for washing; physiological needs had to be met inside the cell, due to which there were many illnesses and two deaths. Food rations: a cooked “soup” from horse lungs once a day, in the morning – around half a liter of tea and 260 grams of bread (a 3 kg loaf for 12 people). There were as many as 93 people in other cells, and they had to sleep there in a standing position. In Dnepropetrovsk, there were 29 of us in a cell of 3.5 x 5.7 [meters]; there were seven beds with countless numbers of lice in them. We suffered tightness and lack of air for the entire day. We had 10–15 minutes a day for a “walk”. Rationing was better than in Przemyśl but insufficient. Most often they fed us with salted fish (so-called liczki or kamsa).
In Dnepropetrovsk, without any prior court trials, we were given “sentences” placing us in labor camps for periods from 5 to 10 years. While drawing up the reports at the prokuror’s office, they kept trying to tell us we were Byelorussians or Ukrainians.
During the transportation to labor camps, we were fed with rotten herrings, dry biscuits and we didn’t get any boiled drinks. We were given water only in limited amounts. The result of this [was] huge mortality among the Poles.
5. Composition of POWs, prisoners (nationality, offense category, moral and intellectual standing, mutual relations, etc.):
The transports were selected in such a way that every Polish group was accompanied by a group of Russians – dregs of society of the worst kind – who robbed us of whatever hadn’t been taken by the Soviet authorities. These scoundrels were at the authorities’ services. They could harass and beat Poles without any consequences, and any attempt to react ended in being massacred by the wochra with rifle butts. During the march between the staging areas that I mentioned above, Cichocki (a clerk in Orbis offices in Warsaw, corner of Marszałkowska and Królewska streets) was shot by politruk [political worker] Zolotarev. When Cichocki was very weak and couldn’t walk, Zolotarev put a jacket over Cichocki’s head, tucked in a gun underneath and took his life by firing two shots. The politruk put krajnoje istoszczenije as a “cause of death” in the death certificate. I saw it while being examined by a doctor a couple of days later. At that stage, the following people died: Jan Nowak, [illegible], Mirosław Bałdyga from Warsaw, Karol Szeliga from Brachowice, Tadeusz Szramkowski from Częstochowa, Czyżewski from Włodzimierz Wołyński, and also 12 Jews from Poland, whose surnames I don’t recall.
In the labor camp, at the time of our arrival, there were around 600 Poles, one Czech citizen, one American, around 120 Carpathian Ruthenians and Russian żulikierka in the so-called 2. Łagpunkt VI otdielenije Peczorski Żelezno-Dorożnyj Łagier. Robbed of everything we had, we worked barefoot and almost naked. Polar frosts were approaching, taking a heavy toll among our people. At the end of October, they equipped us with boots made of car rubber, so-called czeteże, ragged buszłats [shirts] and kufajkas [jackets]. The udarniks did get valenki [felt boots].
6. Life in the camp, prison etc. (daily routine, working conditions, quotas, salary, food rations, clothing, social and cultural life):
The wake-up call was at 4 a.m. At 6 a.m. we had to be at the working site, in this case 7 kilometers away. We were building a railway without using any machines; all the work was done with our hands. Incredibly hard work and terrible rationing and living conditions were killing us. We slept in our temporary clothes, the same we wore at work. Getting undressed was absolutely out of the question, as any rag we took off was immediately stolen by the Russians. Żuliks spat on the faces of those who slept under the bunks and in the barrack corridors, threw garbage at them, etc., doing practical “jokes” without any consequences. The authorities didn’t pay any attention to this. The rations (provided you did 100 per cent of the quota) consisted of: hot water (about three quarters of a liter) with a couple of oat-rye dumplings in the morning, and 600 grams of bread. The bread was underbaked, its bulk was described as five to eight bites. For dinner, at 9 p.m., we would get half a liter of soup and a quarter of a liter of coffee, but no fats. In case of an unattained norm, we would get a soup once a day and 300 grams of bread. There was no option to buy anything. For my work from 1 October 1940 to 1 November 1940, I received 8 rubles and 87 kopecks, with three days off (work odkaz). My brother, who worked all days, received 7 kopecks less.
Cultural or social life was non-existent. The struggle to stay alive was all that mattered there.
7. Medical assistance, hospitals, mortality (list names of the deceased):
Until 10 November 1940 more than 200 people died at our łagpunkt. Sanitary care – none. Until the Polish doctors took up work, anybody in the camp could get to be a doctor if they reported as one. Here is how medical care looked like: on 10 November 1940, I broke both bones in my right leg. I had been lying in the snow in minus 40 degrees [Celsius] temperature for 11 hours until the doctor came. Instead of a doctor, a politruk came, whose task was to persuade me to declare that I broke my leg on purpose to avoid work. The first time a doctor examined my leg was on 14 November, and then the treatment began, which lasted until April 1941. The leg wasn’t in a plaster cast even for a minute. Because the bones were healing randomly, in wrong positions – they had to re-break it. Then they used starched bandage. The hospital was dirty and lice-infested. The Poles were treated worse than others. In the camp I’m describing, the mortality reached such levels that 60 percent of the population died out, and then, by Moscow’s ruling, the foreman of the Peczżeldorłag named Bolshakov and the main doctor of that camp, Novosadova, were arrested. After being sentenced to 10 years, they were actually left on their posts, the only difference being they were now called zakluczeni and were the deputies of the wolnonajomninaczalniks.
In the hospital where I stayed there were four Poles undergoing treatment, of whom the following died: Tadeusz Szatarski from Lwów, Kirjanek from Białystok, and Szczęsny Tarnowski from Lwów.
8. NKVD’s attitude toward Poles (methods of interrogation, torturing, punishments, communist propaganda, information about Poland, etc.):
During the interrogations, we were accused of being Sikorski’s miateżniks bandits, supporting the prostitutka England, that we were not Poles at all, but Ukrainians or Byelorussians. They were also trying to tell us we were intending to spy for Germans in hopes of making Poland spread from sea to sea again. Polsza propała na wsiegda – said sliedowatiel Kościuch during my interrogation. And in response to my remark: “Well, it’s not yet clear, the war isn’t over”, he said, waving his gun: “Who will give Poland to you? You won’t get it from us for sure. We, the Bolshevik generation, are on a mission to take control over all of Europe. First we’ll deal with the prostitutka England, then we will pay back the Germans for 1917, we’ll cover Japan with our hats, Musolinos are not worth a mention, and America will zdastsia by itself”. To my question about what was going to happen to the rest of the world, he responded, “ Uże nasze, naprimier Meksika”.
I know cases of people being beaten up, broken by starvation.
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