Corporal Officer Cadet Stanisław Gaweł, 23 years old, trade school graduate, bachelor.
I was arrested on 16 April 1940 near Przemyśl after I had crossed the Russian-German border, as a result of the local Ukrainians turning me in to the border guard. Until 20 September 1940 I was held in prison in Przemyśl, I was then transferred to Starobilsk, and from there I was sent north to labor camps in Komi ASSR, to the town of Chibyu.
The accommodation and hygiene conditions were horrendous. A cell normally meant for 16 people held 120, so lying down was out of the question. The food was very poor, people were physically weak and would hold onto the wall when walking. There was almost no medical help. For the smallest of offences we were locked in dark cells, stripped naked, water was poured onto the concrete floor, and the food rations were decreased to the minimum. There were no beds, canteens, spoons or anything like that in the cells. We all slept on the clothes we wore.
The journey from Przemyśl to Starobilsk took 16 days, and that from Starobilsk to the north – 18 days. We traveled in freight cars, unheated, while the temperature outside fell to 60 degrees below zero. The food: dark bread and salty herring, limited amounts of snow for drink. We were escorted by NKVD soldiers. When someone asked for some water to drink and the train had stopped, the person was laid on the snow and stayed like that for an hour or two, but if the train was moving, the person was tied up and laid on a platform. In Starobilsk, I was sentenced in absentia to five years in a labor camp by the so-called NKVD five.
In the north, I was in Poźnia forest camp no. 3. The conditions were so terrible they were unimaginable for anybody who wasn’t there. We worked from 16 to 18 hours a day. The food and clothes depended on the percentage of the quota met. The quota was almost impossible to meet, all the more so that the Russian brigadiers were never fair when calculating how much of the quota Poles had met, always understating ours and increasing the yield achieved by their compatriots. The Poles were consequently poorly clothed and constantly hungry. Eighty percent of frostbite and 60–70 percent of scurvy cases happened among Poles. For meeting 100 percent of the quota you received 900 grams of bread, a liter of soup made of smelly fish heads and boiled oats. If you met the full quota for an entire month, after deductions for food and clothes, you received about 50 kopecks per day, which could not buy anything. The store was only for the Stakhanovites and [illegible] in the camp a pack of shag tobacco for 50 rubles. The Poles who owned better clothes and footwear, etc. were immediately robbed, which had no legal consequences for the perpetrators, who did it openly. We had no underwear, the place was full of lice and unbearable bed bugs.
The medical assistance was very poor. If the doctor was a Pole, he did what he could, but that was little and there was a shortage of medications. Those who were physically weaker and unable to give all they had were locked in punishment cells on a daily basis. What is more, they only received 300 grams of bread and water – so death was imminent. There were 80 Poles in my camp – six of them died while I was there and about 30 of them were sent to hospital in a very bad state. I remember the names of two of the deceased men: Przystajko – a post office clerk from Lwów, and Ryszard Gryczuk – a young boy, 18 years old, from Warsaw.
I tested the attitude of the NKVD on myself. Apart from the abuse during the transports, because while being interrogated I confessed that I had been heading for Hungary, for which I was sentenced to five years.
I had no contact with the home country and my family, and the only information I received from the interrogators was that if Poland were to exist, it would be red.
I was released on 23 July 1941, but the Soviet authorities turned to persuasion or even threats so that we would stay and continue working for them. However, due to the Poles’ firm stance, they organized – although reluctantly – a transport, gave 75 rubles for the journey to each of us, and on 5 September 1941 we set off for Totskoye, where we arrived on 23 September 1941.