1. [Personal details:]
Bolesław Milewski, born on 15 August 1900, officer of the PKP Wilno headquarters, Smorgonie [Smorgon] station, married.
2. [Date and circumstances of arrest:]
Arrested by the NKVD at home in Smorgonie on 14 November 1939.
3. [Name of the camp, prison, place of forced labor:]
Deported to a prison in Mołodeczno [Maladzyechna], from where I was transported to a prison in Tobolsk on 24 June 1941.
4. [Description of the camp, prison:]
The conditions were terrible in the prison in Mołodeczno, as well as in Tobolsk, as there were 30 of us imprisoned in a cell that was six by five meters, and at times there were more. There was no air, so the prisoners were drenched in sweat during the day and at night alike, even though we were all stripped completely naked. There was no hygiene, we were released to go to the toilet once a day. The conditions were simply impossible.
5. [Identity of the prisoners, prisoners of war, exiles:]
There were 860 people imprisoned in the Mołodeczno prison, despite the fact that it was a small house that could accommodate only about eight families. The moral level among the prisoners was very depressing.
6. [Life in the camp, prison:]
The life of prisoners in the USSR: 600 grams of bread a day, tea without sugar, including soup supposedly two times, but unfortunately the soup didn’t differ much from the tea because there was literally nothing in it – no fat, no groats, or potatoes. Sometimes there were white beets and a little cabbage, that’s what the soup was like, and this was very seldom. The prisoners were not supplied with clothes. There was absolutely no education or cultural life.
7. [Attitude of the NKVD authorities towards Poles:]
The NKVD authorities were very brutal in their treatment of the imprisoned Poles; all the interrogations took place at night, from 10 PM to 5 AM. Most of the Polish prisoners were beaten and tortured mercilessly at every interrogation. The day I was arrested, a preliminary investigation was carried out by the NKVD. They beat and even massacred me. Then, during every interrogation, they would address Poland and myself with brutal words (yob tvoyu mat’ prekhvost ty Polyak, Polsha propala i ty prepadniosh, sukinsyn [You damned Pole, Poland is lost and so you’ll be, you Polish bastard]). They accused me of belonging to an organization against the communist regime since the formation of the Polish state, [and that] I was good to the capitalist state.
8. [Medical care, hospitals, mortality:]
Although there was medical care, the patients lay in prison cells for several days, often with a high fever or in great pain, moaning and asking for help, but there was none. That’s what it was like in Mołodeczno, in cell 18 – 15; I don’t recall the names of the sick, one of them died in cell 18. When the prisoners from Mołodeczno were transported to Tobolsk, there were 60 of us in a 15-ton train wagon. They bolted the doors tight and did the same to the windows. The wagons were not adapted to be tidied, so one window was broached open once a day and we threw away our feces, which we did on pieces of linen.
9. [Describe the kind of communication you had with your family and country, if there was any?]
I did not have any contact with my family or with the country.
10. [When were you released and how did you get into the army?]
On 2 September 1941, I was released from Tobolsk prison on the basis of an amnesty for Polish citizens. After leaving prison, I worked in Tobolsk at constructing central heating, and then on 26 December 1941, I came to Buzuluk to join the Polish Army. I stood before the military commission and was found to be fit for the army; I was assigned to the 18th Infantry Regiment in Totskoye.
19 March 1943