1. Personal details (name, surname, rank, number of field post office, age, occupation, and marital status):
Stanisław Michalak, aged 34, factory worker, married; field post office no. 160.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
On 2 October, the Polish troops and civilians in Kowel [now Kovel, Ukraine] were misled by USSR soldiers, who were walking around the town and saying that there was a train for Siedlce, departing at 4:00 PM; when the train was already full and started moving, Russians immediately appeared and closed its cars; the whole transport arrived in the town of Brody [now in Ukraine], where we were already treated as prisoners of war.
3. Name of the camp, prison, or forced labor site:
1. Sasów [now Sasiv, Ukraine], 2. Podhorce [now Pidhirtsi, Ukraine], 3. Mościska [now Mostyska, Ukraine], 4. Kamionka [now Kamianka-Buzka], [in the] forest, near Tarnopol [now Ternopil, Ukraine].
4. Description of the camp, prison, etc. (grounds, buildings, living conditions, hygiene):
Kamionka camp, in the forest [?], was a building damaged by a fire, roofed with boards. In two rooms there were 170 of us. We were allowed to move on a surface of 30 square meters. Around it there were three lines of wires, with a guard standing at each corner. There was no well or shower room in the camp.
5. Composition of POWs, prisoners, and deportees (nationality, category of crime, intellectual and moral level, mutual relations, etc.):
Our camp was composed of prisoners of war, Polish by nationality. Mutual relations were very good, until a certain moment. After some time, the authorities of the camp assigned six people in the service of the Soviets to stay with us. These people reported everything to the Russian commandant of the camp, who punished people with five days in solitary confinement, even for singing a song. The solitary was a shelter, a cellar [illegible]. The confined person was not even allowed to take a coat for the night, and he was given food once a day.
6. Life in the camp, prison, etc. (the course of an average day, working conditions, quotas, remuneration, food, clothes, social and cultural life):
The day began with a wake-up call at 5:00 in the morning, and at 7:00 AM we marched out to work. Work started at 8:00 AM. From 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM there was lunch break. Lunch was brought in barrels to the work site; it usually consisted of millet groats, seven kilos of which was cooked for the whole camp. The main course was usually herring. The working conditions were hard; our work was the excavation of stone, of which five people were supposed to excavate six cubic meters as well as transport it over the fence and put it there. No one was able to meet the established quota, and so everyone was given 600 or 400 grams of bread per day. A Soviet officer gave educational talks, in which he spoke about the power of Russia and the non-restoration of Poland.
7. Attitude of NKVD authorities to the Poles (methods of interrogation, torture, punishments, communist propaganda, information about Poland, etc.):
Interrogations were carried out often, and always at night. Communist propaganda was used by the NKVD authorities at every opportunity. What they said about Poland was that it would never exist again.
8. Medical assistance, hospitals, mortality (give the names of those who died):
There was no medical assistance. The camp’s commandant had a thermometer and exempted inmates from work only if their fever reached 38 degrees; these people were put to various kinds of work in the camp: chopping wood, carrying water to the cauldron, and washing the floor, which was laid only in passageways.
9. What kind of contact, if any, was there with your country and family?
There was no contact with the country, and no reply came from the letters we sent.
10. When were you released and how did you make it to the army?
When Germany invaded Russia, we worked at the construction of an airfield near Tarnopol [now Ternopil, Ukraine]. From there, they marched us 750 kilometers on foot to Zolotonosha. In Zolotonosha, we were put on a train that took us to Starobelsk, and here, on 17 August 1941, I enlisted in the Polish Army.