MARIA MIKUSZEWSKA

1. [Personal details:]

Volunteer Maria Danuta Mikuszewska, 34 years old, typist correspondent, married.

2. [Date and circumstances of arrest:]

On 13 April 1940, I was deported from Lwów after the arrest of my husband, associate professor at Jan Kazimierz University and judge in Lwów.

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

Semipalatinsk oblast, Kokpektyn region (Chigelekh Sovkhoz [State Farm] – farm No. 2), Bolshaya Bukon.

4. [Description of the camp, prison:]

The camp was on one of the farms that belonged to the sovkhoz [state-owned Soviet farm]. The farm we were deported to was located 150 kilometers from the railway station. There were a few mud huts that belonged to the Cossacks living on the farm, apart from that, there were three stables for cattle. One of the stables – without windows, floors, or doors – served as a room for dozens of people (including several very young children and a few elderly people). People slept side-by-side on bundles of straw. We cooked on improvised, self-made cookers. Stalks were harvested on the steppe and so-called kiziak [manure] was used as fuel.

There was no hygiene in these conditions. There were only two basins for several dozen people, so you had to wait in line until one of them was available. Clothes and head lice were such a common phenomenon that killing them was part of the daily washing routine.

5. [Identity of the prisoners, prisoners of war, exiles:]

As far as social classes are concerned, most people were from the so-called intelligentsia, from the civil service and military spheres, plus policemen’s families. The Poles were very amicable towards one another; people showed a lot of heart and helped one another as much as they could.

6. [Life in the camp, prison:]

One of the first types of work was making kiziak [fuel made from manure], saman [bricks made from a mixture of clay and straw, dried in the sun], plus “smearing” (that is whitewashing the stables), planting potatoes, weeding grains, winnowing, and haymaking. At first, we’d only get money for our labor, and the earnings ranged from 30 to 60 rubles a month. Haymaking would earn us from 300 to 500 grams of bread a day, tchai [tea] in the morning and evening, and soup with meat for dinner. People who could not work had to get bread and other products by exchanging [their] belongings. The quotas were so high that hardly anyone could manage to meet them, not only the Poles, but also the Cossacks and Russians who worked. As for food, it was impossible to get anything in the shops and you had to live by exchanging things, sometimes having to walk several kilometers to the kolkhozes. Women with sacks on their backs or pulling sleds in blizzards and frost just to bring a few potatoes home, was a very common sight. The main food was flour, but once the price came to 250 rubles per pound, many people lived on bran, baking cakes or making other dishes, depending on their culinary skills.

Cultural life came down to reading a few books that people had either taken with them or received from Poland. Normally, however, people of culture preferred to receive simple parcels with fat, sugar, etc.

7. [Attitude of the NKVD authorities towards Poles:]

The Soviet authorities, in this case the representatives of the sovkhoz, addressed everyone on a first name basis, whilst being extremely brutal at work. When work was more intensive, they’d barge into the stable yelling horribly, awakening everyone to work at four or five in the morning. For failing to come to work they would threaten one with tyurma [prison], and in a few cases, these threats were carried out. The smallest punishment was taking away 25 percent of one’s earnings under a court order. Generally, the local authorities treated us like criminals convicted of serious offenses who did not deserve any respect whatsoever. They repeatedly told us not to delude ourselves, that we would ever return to Poland. At best, it was claimed that we were bourgeois sentenced to 10 years of exile.

As for the special authorities, we were treated somewhat more kindly and, as far as I know, no one was exposed to any particular harassment on their part.

8. [Medical care, hospitals, mortality:]

It was seven kilometers to the so-called bolnitsa [hospital], and considering the relations, it had an appropriate standard in terms of the doctors and hygienic conditions. However, there were no medications, and the doctors were intimidated by the NKVD, which forbade them to issue sick leave from work. Sick leaves were issued very cautiously and in extremely serious cases.

[Those who] died in Russia: the late Kołakowska, locksmith’s wife, the late Buczek (I did not know [illegible]), the late Aniela Biesiadocka from Lwów and Anna Podsońska, the wife of an engineer from Lwów, died in the south of Russia; she was in Bukon before the “liberation.”

9. [Describe the kind of communication you had with your family and country, if any]

From June 1940 to August 1941 I received letters and parcels from relatives and friends; others also received theirs.

10. [When were you released and how did you get into the army?]

I was released on the basis of the general amnesty after the Polish-English-Russian agreement. I left Russia as a military man’s sister because my brother had joined the army.